The first clash came at the northern gate.
Wang Ben watched from the wall as a squad of foundation establishment cultivators, city guards and Huo Clan loyalists, moved to intercept a probing force of demonic cultivators. The defenders outnumbered the attackers three to one. It should have been a simple engagement.
It wasn't.
The demonic cultivators moved like wolves among sheep. Their techniques were brutal, efficient, designed not just to defeat but to terrify. Within thirty seconds, half the defenders were down. Within a minute, the survivors were retreating, dragging their wounded, their formation shattered.
And that was just the vanguard. The three mortal shedding cultivators hadn't even moved yet.
"Pull back to the inner district," someone was shouting. "Defensive positions at the secondary walls!"
Wang Ben felt the trembling in his hands grow worse. Not fear this time. Something deeper. The cultivation pressure that had been building for days was reaching a breaking point, his body straining against limits that couldn't hold much longer.
[STATUS UPDATE]
[Body Tempering Pill absorption: 99.1%]
[Physical enhancement: +334% baseline]
[Warning: Breakthrough imminent. Current conditions extremely suboptimal.]
[Recommendation: Withdraw to secure location for controlled advancement.]
I can't. Wang Ben forced the pressure down, pushed it into the corners of his consciousness where it couldn't distract him. Not now. Not yet.
The battle was spreading. Fires bloomed along the eastern quarter as demonic techniques tore through buildings and barriers. The screams of the wounded mixed with the clash of steel and the roar of qi techniques. And through it all, the three figures at the head of the demonic column stood motionless, watching.
Waiting.
Grand Elder Dao Lingwei found Wang Ben on the secondary wall, his hands gripping the stone so hard his knuckles had gone white.
"You should be with the evacuation teams," she said. Her voice was calm, almost gentle. Nothing like the cold authority she'd shown in the war council.
"I can still help. My observations..."
"Your observations have already told us everything we need to know." She moved to stand beside him, her gaze following his toward the distant figures. "Three mortal shedding cultivators. Two dozen core formation and foundation establishment support. We cannot win."
"Then why are you here?"
Dao Lingwei was silent for a long moment. The wind caught her white hair, pulling strands free from its severe binding. She looked old, Wang Ben realized. Old in a way that had nothing to do with her cultivation-extended lifespan.
"Do you know why I never liked your clan?" she asked.
The question caught him off guard. "No."
"Because you reminded me of what we lost." Her voice was soft now, stripped of its usual edge. "The Dao Clan used to be strong. Stronger than we are now. We had four core formation elders when I was young. Four. Now we have one." She paused. "Now we have me."
"Grand Elder..."
"My son is dying." The words fell like stones. "You know this. Everyone knows this, even if no one speaks of it. Jianfeng was supposed to reach nascent soul. He was supposed to carry the clan forward. Instead, he failed, and his body is eating itself, and there is nothing I can do to save him."
Wang Ben didn't know what to say. Didn't know if there was anything to say.
"When this is over, when the demons are dealt with, the Dao Clan will have nothing left." Dao Lingwei turned to look at him, and something flickered in her ancient eyes. Recognition, perhaps. Or resignation. "Your father's technique. The meridian enhancement. It could help Zhen. It could help us rebuild."
"It will. I'll make sure of it."
"I know you will." A ghost of a smile crossed her weathered face. "My grandson thinks highly of you. That alone tells me more than all my years of observing your clan."
In the distance, one of the mortal shedding cultivators moved. Just a single step forward. The effect on the battlefield was immediate: defenders faltering, attacks losing momentum, hope draining away like water through cracked stone.
"They're coming," Wang Ben said.
"Yes." Dao Lingwei drew her sword. The blade sang as it cleared the scabbard, a pure note that seemed to cut through the chaos below. "They are."
"You can't fight them. Core formation against mortal shedding..."
"I know exactly what I can and cannot do." Her voice had regained its edge, cold and sharp as the blade in her hand. "I cannot win. I cannot survive. But I can buy time. Time for the evacuation. Time for the other elders to organize a second line. Time for..." She paused. "Time for whatever miracle you're planning."
"I'm not..."
"You are." She cut him off with a look. "I've watched you, Wang Ben. Watched you move through this war like you can see things no one else can. You have something. Some advantage the rest of us don't understand. I don't need to know what it is. I just need to know that you'll use it."
Wang Ben met her eyes. In that moment, he saw a woman who had spent her entire life fighting for a clan that was slowly dying around her. A woman who had watched her son fail and her grandson grieve and her people dwindle year by year. A woman who had nothing left to give except her life.
"I'll use it," he said. "I promise."
"Good." Dao Lingwei turned toward the stairs that led down to the battlefield. "Tell Zhen I'm proud of him. Tell him to be a better patriarch than his father was."
"Grand Elder..."
But she was already gone, her white hair streaming behind her as she descended into the chaos below.
The mortal shedding cultivator who stepped forward to meet her was the youngest of the three. Thin, calculating, with eyes that held no warmth and no mercy. The Jin brothers' support specialist, sent to handle what should have been a trivial obstacle.
Dao Lingwei's first strike came without warning. Her blade carved through the air with a speed that belied her age, sword intent screaming toward the demonic cultivator like a bolt of silver lightning.
He caught it on two fingers.
The impact sent shockwaves rippling outward, shattering windows and cracking stone. But the demonic cultivator hadn't moved. Hadn't needed to. The gap between core formation and mortal shedding wasn't a gap at all. It was a chasm, an abyss, a difference so fundamental that comparison became meaningless.
"Core formation." The demonic cultivator's voice was flat, unimpressed. "The strongest this city has to offer?"
Dao Lingwei didn't waste breath on words. She flowed into her next attack, blade dancing through patterns she'd spent three centuries perfecting. Eighteen strikes in the span of three heartbeats, each one carrying the weight of a lifetime's mastery.
The demonic cultivator blocked them all without moving his feet.
"Adequate technique," he observed. "Poor execution. Your qi is unstable. You're too old for this realm."
"Perhaps." Dao Lingwei's sword wove a defensive pattern, buying herself a moment to breathe. Behind her, she could hear the sounds of retreat: cultivators falling back, civilians being herded toward the inner city, lives being saved with every second she held his attention. "But I'm not fighting to win."
She attacked again. And again. And again.
Wang Ben watched from the wall, unable to look away, unable to help. His body screamed at him, cultivation pressure building, breakthrough threatening to tear through him at the worst possible moment. But he couldn't leave. Couldn't abandon her.
The fight lasted four minutes.
In the world of mortal shedding cultivators, four minutes against a core formation opponent was embarrassingly long. He should have ended it in seconds. But Dao Lingwei fought with everything she had: every technique, every insight, every desperate trick learned over three centuries of survival. She didn't try to win. She just tried to last.
The killing blow came without fanfare. One moment Dao Lingwei was pressing forward, her sword a blur of silver light. The next, his hand was through her chest, fingers wrapped around something that pulsed with fading light.
"Your core," he said, examining the crystallized essence of her cultivation. "Impure. Cracked. You were never going to reach nascent soul anyway."
Dao Lingwei's sword fell from her fingers. But her eyes, even now, held no fear.
"Four minutes," she whispered. Blood bubbled at her lips. "Four minutes you'll never get back."
He crushed her core in his fist. Dao Lingwei's body crumpled, life extinguished in an instant.
And somewhere on the wall above, Dao Zhen began to scream.
Wang Ben caught him before he could jump.
"Let me go!" Dao Zhen's voice was raw, shattered, nothing like the composed heir who had sparred with Wang Ben just days ago. "LET ME GO!"
"She told me to tell you something." Wang Ben's arms were locked around Dao Zhen's chest, holding him back from the edge, from the twenty-meter drop to the battlefield below. "She said she's proud of you."
"I don't care! She's dead! She's DEAD and I just watched and I did NOTHING..."
"She wanted you to live." Wang Ben's own voice cracked, but he held on. "She gave everything she had so you could live. Don't waste it."
Dao Zhen's struggles weakened. His body sagged in Wang Ben's grip, the rage draining away to leave only grief. "She was all I had left. My father's dying. My grandmother's dead. What's left? What's the point?"
"The point is survival." Wang Ben released him slowly, ready to grab him again if needed. "The point is making their sacrifices mean something. The point is..."
A wave of pressure crashed over them both, stealing the words from his throat.
The demonic cultivator who had killed Dao Lingwei had leapt to the top of the wall, her blood still wet on his hands. His aura expanded outward, pressing down on everyone within a hundred meters. Wang Ben felt it like a physical weight, crushing him toward the stone.
"This city belongs to the Jin Wolf faction now," the demonic cultivator announced. His voice carried effortlessly, amplified by cultivation techniques. "Surrender, and some of you may live. Resist, and you will all share the old woman's fate."
Wang Ben's vision swam. The cultivation pressure inside him spiked, feeding off the external force, pushing him toward a breakthrough he couldn't afford. Not here. Not now.
[WARNING: BREAKTHROUGH THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
[Advancement initiating...]
[OVERRIDE DETECTED - Host consciously suppressing advancement]
[Warning: Extended suppression may cause permanent meridian damage]
[Time until forced breakthrough: Estimated 2-4 hours]
He forced himself to breathe. Forced the energy down, contained, controlled. His body was screaming at him, every cell demanding release, demanding evolution. But he couldn't. Not until he'd reached Shen Wuyan. Not until he'd secured some chance of survival.
"Can you walk?" he asked Dao Zhen.
The Dao heir looked at him with hollow eyes. "What does it matter?"
"It matters because your grandmother just died buying you time. It matters because your father needs to know what happened. It matters because if you give up now, everything she did was for nothing."
Something flickered in Dao Zhen's expression. Not hope; he was too broken for hope. But something harder. Something that might, given time, become purpose.
"My father," he said slowly. "Someone needs to tell him."
"Then tell him. Go to him. Be there when he hears."
Dao Zhen nodded once, mechanically. He turned toward the stairs, then paused. "Wang Ben."
"Yes?"
"Don't die." The words were flat, empty, but Wang Ben heard the meaning beneath them. Don't make me lose anyone else.
"I'll try."
Dao Zhen disappeared down the stairs. Wang Ben turned back toward the battlefield, toward the demonic cultivator standing atop the wall, toward the two stronger cultivators who had yet to move.
And somewhere in the Dao Clan compound, a dying patriarch heard the news of his mother's death and began to rise from his bed.
END OF CHAPTER 48