The Scroll Hall’s aide returned a bow to Fu. “May you live in interesting times, senior Gao Fu,” he said, already hoarse from their brief exchange.

“I thank you, senior, for your kind words,” he replied. “The tome you gifted me was of great value. Gratitude, once again. I am a fuller man for it.”

“It is well known that a single book holds a house of gold.”

“Then I am only sorry that I may not read more.” Fu made to leave, knowing that the time before first light thinned. He had felt, however, that it would be in poor taste to leave on this mission without first returning what was owed.

A cough rasped throughout the cavernous library after he had moved several paces, and a breaking of voice. “Senior Gao Fu,” called the aide, struggling after a short jog to both bow and catch his breath. “I do not mean…” The next cough sounded truly painful, and Fu extended an arm to right the man before he doubled over. “I do not mean to insult you, as you…”

Between another bout, Fu granted a reassuring smile. “Please, senior, if formality preys upon your throat, speak plain and speak slow. Would that I had honey and [Spirit Citrus], I might aid you.”

“Honey and [Spirit Citrus]?” the aide returned, still gripped by his malady.

“A poor man’s alchemy. You might stew them in your tea, and-” Fu held his tongue. “The Cloudy Serpent Sect possesses myriad tinctures and balms, apologies, senior. You will have no want of what I speak, and knowledge used to aid the sopping noses of mortal children is poor for one such as you.”

The aide righted, and hesitantly, clapped Fu’s hand free. “Alchemy, nonetheless, Gao Fu. I thank you.”

“Think nothing of it, senior, for that is all it is.”

“I am aware of how time presses, but I would ask a query. Are you willing to part with your Merit Points, in small number?”

Fu arched a brow at that, having never browsed the exchange since arrival. “The other Bastions will not hold a Merit Exchange, will they? Perhaps, even then I might not have the leave to use it.” He wondered on how much time was remaining, and if he had enough to warrant a visit before departure. “I am willing, depending on what I might purchase.”

🀦

The [Coiling Star Defensive Array] quaked in the pre-morning sun, and in the resulting seconds it faded to show great sections of the barrier moult off as though it were parchment atop a flame.

Shoulder to shoulder, Fu stood with a force in greater number than he knew the name of, awaiting the Bastion’s gate to unseal.

Cheng Rao had yet to appear and as such his fingers rubbed the edge of the book pouch upon his belt, feeling the pair of narrow tomes slotted within. Heavy, and with little give on either side.

I should revisit my benefactor once this campaign is over to give thanks. He must have some sway over pricing, for these cost me little.

Beside him, a woman fidgeted.

As did the two cultivators to his right.

A representation of the collective disciples that held their gaze anywhere but the gate ahead. There seemed a lack of solidity in his comrades, as though they were dispossessed of the experience required to steel themselves before what came.

Understandable, he supposed, as he was not without his own concerns.

Dawn broke upon the horizon, albeit obscured by the Bastion’s walls. The light of a rich magenta at first appearance, almost glowing behind the mighty bulwark that separated Fu from the Blight and all beyond.

Drowning all in a gloom of shadow as the sun crept ever higher.

Cheng Rao arrived at the head of their formation no later than the sun. His presence dictated that the gates should open, revealing the vast ridge beyond, and the wispy fog that clung to it. He stepped forth without address, hands interred in the sleeves of a tight-fit hanfu, and wearing the grandfatherly expression of disappointment as he did.

A queer affair that followed, wherein Cheng Rao would walk as though on a scenic stroll, and the mass of disciples behind would march. Order prevailed in inherent understanding, never doled out in commands by their leader, merely expected, and even across the precarious ridge did those of the Cloudy Serpent Sect traverse in this fashion.

Two abreast, timed to move within the step of any before them.

Fu oft wondered, between wary steps, if they should not move with more haste. Given how the Blight below roiled, the [Dao Field] within an eager thing that already had its sights set on winding up the rocky edge.

Hushi shared this, granting a similar impression. A clutch held on Fu’s jaw warned him of what he already knew.

[Spirit Beasts] were climbing.

At [Foundation Realm], his ears prickled with each chime of the myriad legs they possessed, as chitinous appendages or hardened limbs struck rock on their ascent. Begging a question of why their senior had yet to react.

For he was at [Core Formation Realm], and one with four Bonds tethered. A [Four Pointed].

To mark his strength by attribute alone, Fu knew that Cheng Rao’s [Ink] would total a value in each that defied his own, humble comprehension. Why then, did he ignore this?

Disregard for our lives? Expectation?

As ever, the Blight licked its foul tongues towards the Heavens. The blanket close enough that any who toppled might meet it in two heartbeats.

Across the disciples, a susurrus grew. Secret exchanges for fear of reprisal. Foolish, for Cheng Rao would hear all. But this grew into louder whispers, and in turn, to face the din of clambering [Spirit Beasts].

Again, Cheng Rao strolled.

“Hushi,” broke Fu, unfurling his chain. “We will seek the meaning in this fight.”

The ridge’s skree-littered ground was no more than three strides from edge to edge, and for this reason, the shower of gore from the cultivator to his side could not be avoided. No, a spray, foul and thick, fell like rain upon him.

A fist within those ribs, primitive and furred. The aura around it, a malevolent lime, now pried free as the corpse fell flaccid into a tumble.

Fu sprung high, knowing well the width of his footing, and spread his chain into a noose. His leap brought him inverted, where he came down to mount the [Spirit Ape’s] back, his weapon already taught, having slipped around the trunk of its neck.

[Half Cloud Step].

With a rush of will, [Air Qi] strengthened his limbs, granting the strength to garrote the beast. Yet it flailed in uproar, protesting the flea upon it, rounding and smashing.

The utter [Might] displayed swept two disciples from the ridge. A kindness, in the death dealt before their bodies might shatter upon protruding boulders or unkind edges.

As they now did.

Each turn, and each pound of this [Spirit Ape] saw Fu’s feet come loose, and with it his grip slackened. More a passenger, horizontal. Whipped across the chasm of Blight, the hands he had wound into the metal his only respite.

Hushi arrived in tandem with his next kick, and Fu conjured his ethereal platform beneath a sole, gaining the leverage he needed to tighten his hold. All the while his proximity to the [Poison Qi] aura invited a ruin of welts to appear on his skin. A blistering heat in each, agitating his palms to have pain surface wherever he pressed the chain.

No worse than the burn his nets might give him, should he be careless.

His Bond had jetted to the [Spirit Ape’s] opposing side, and grappled with the beast’s frothing jaws as it snapped and howled. Here he took precious seconds to affix himself, and plunge his arms through the creature’s ears.

One, solid vibration passed through Fu as the creature swayed. A solitary step that served as its death throes before weight had it teeter back towards the edge.

Its bulk angled towards Fu, approaching at a pace that seemed slow in his vision.

So he reacted: releasing his chain, and conjuring another cloud from which he bounced. Landing gracelessly.

Combat was heavy along the span of the ridge, and upon standing firm once more, he cursed to see what was wrought.

Opposing waves of [Spirit Beasts] clashed from either approach. A flock, or swarm of insects much like that he had previously faced, and the challengers to this meal, the pack of rampaging [Spirit Apes].

Granting small relief in how few had appeared.

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His fellow disciples were flanked, and though weapons were drawn they struck aimlessly at open air. Lacking the reach, or those who held them proved too unskilled to match pace with what aerial predators had emerged amidst their scuttling brethren.

Few, he saw, mounted a fitting defence, but they were not the majority.

Fu broke into a full sprint, lashing his chain into the wing of a hovering [Spirit Beetle] and having it clatter away from the cultivator it loomed over. “What is the order?” he shouted, lifting the man to his feet in time to drive another blow back at the returning insect.

“Orders?” The man said, confusion more dominant than fear.

“Brother, what are the orders?” Another curse flew from Fu’s lips as he was forced to dodge in a scrape along the ground, inches from the grasping hand of a [Spirit Ape]. Dust rose as he did, a cloud that was then cast aside in the path of the [Spirit Beetle], diving from his right.

This beast was hornless, though bristles of fur cowled around its front. Those, Fu grasped at as the creature impacted, his fingernails pushing in shallow. He gasped, now wrapped around its head as the pair ascended.

The strike had winded him, and he was caught between scrambling and panting, prevented from drawing a full breath. Sky and chaos blurred into one image about them, accompanied by the rapid flit of the beetle’s wings. Beneath him, Fu kicked out, scaling with a thin grasp on some unknown groove.

Where he bounded back to enter the open air.

By the grace of his own movement he was balanced. Upright. The [Control] he held allowed his chain to fly, and wind, latching to the wing of the growing-distant beetle. Bringing Fu into a swing in the bare moment that it remained hovering.

With [Half Cloud Step]’s conjuration called on again, he rebounded, springing one foot to halt his momentum, invert into a somersault, and tear down with all his might. The bound wing snapped, and Fu stood firm the ridge as his quarry smashed into rock, and further, crippled in its plummet.

A set of four disciples reacted to his arrival, a pace ahead. Half embroiled in combat, a bow in the hand of one, plucking swift death with each twang of the string.

“Senior!” exclaimed the furthest, oddly, calling around the shoulder of one he gripped quite tight.

Fu shook, advancing to hold the line against a mass of smaller [Spirit Insects]. Lice, by the look of them, if not bloated in scale since last he had taken a comb to Feng’s hair.

“Brothers,” he intoned, then adding, “Sister,” to the one who stood shaking her comrade.

An older fellow, pallid, and still. He parsed quieted words to his Bond, a stoat, cupped bleeding in his hands.

“Brother?” the woman said, eyes narrowed. “Then you are no less lost than we.” She turned then, both from Fu and her frozen comrade, raising the jian in her off-hand to join the fray.

Cheng Rao leaves us to the beasts with no guiding hand. Is there not a single man here that holds seniority?

As he held no modicum of command, Fu deigned to form ranks. If he could bring some semblance of the Nineteenth’s fluidity to bear, then he knew they might survive this. So his coming lashes were cast at the [Spirit Lices’] legs, with an intent of crippling. Easier that, than spend his energy on wearing down the [Formation Realm] [Resilience] of their flesh.

In a parcel of minutes Fu’s [Inner Qi] was reaching depletion, and he stopped the flow of his [Half Cloud Step] for the sake of preservation. “I am nearing the limit for my Qi,” he called.

“As are we all,” shouted the bow wielder, his weapon stowed in favour of fists. The quiver upon his belt well emptied. “I fear the beasts will overtake us before- before… I cannot say. Are we to make progress across the ridge, or are we to hold?”

Fu considered this, having weighed these two options. The serpentine [Contribution Array] stole a corner of his attention. To fall white debted. He could not let that happen, lest what he owed be passed to his children.

“At the least, we should gather. A single pillar cannot support one house,” he said. The ridge held many pockets such as these five, and Fu cast his gaze to the far end, spying Cheng Rao not a li away. “Forgive me. But I wish to advance.”

The other disciples gave curt nods to show their agreement. Clashing, still, with the [Spirit Beasts] on either side, shuffling at less than full capacity around their kneeling comrade, who had yet to move.

“Brother, we are to move!” one called, though Fu’s head had already turned back to the beasts.

With all his intent on Hushi, jetting by individual beasts to rip free their legs, or pasting himself tight against their shells to goad others into charging, he waited for the break that would allow him to move.

Seconds passed, nine rapid beats of his heart, and he set into a sprin-

“Brother!” shouted the bow-wielder, looming over, and jerking the corners of the older fellow’s hanfu, Unable to pry him from his spot.

Fu clattered to one side, having expected the others to move with him. Loose skree had his foot slip, jarring his leg to one side and tumbling him into the ground. More than half-poised to see himself over the edge.

Inaction will doom them.

A corona of lime erupted through the space between his hovering arm and the ground, contained within the sopping mouth of a [Spirit Ape]. Fu rolled, frantically, once to his back, before springing to his feet. “Ape,” he yelled.

The beast thrust itself upwards in a grab of earth, gusting a shockwave of detritus out, and bellowing in challenge. And at the apex of its roar did a gaseous, turgid plume of [Poison Qi] gush across the area.

Fu, pre-warned by what he had witnessed moments ago, clamped tight his mouth. The gas seeped into his lungs, compressing them, and shortening his breath even with the trace amount that had entered.

Making his next leap fall short by a pace.

Wails sounded behind, right as he delivered a kick from the [Stifling Stream Revolutions], a blow that cracked low to high, snapping the [Ape’s] head up alongside its plume.

Already, Hushi was there, constricted around its arms to pin both back as Fu followed through with a series of blows. The limitations of both chain and knuckle evident, for he could no more pierce or wound the beast than a mortal might.

A dao, or jian. That is what I need. Something to thrust and draw blood.

Both cultivator and Bond rose the creature down, where its primitive howls revealed another plume massing in its throat. A thrum building, and carrying into Fu. However, he was unwilling to receive it, and forced his chain into the beast’s wisping jaws.

Snapping a lower canine free, and savaging his own arm to collect it. The retaliatory scream was so hateful and so shrill, that he flinched before staking the [Spirit Ape’s] tooth deep into its eye socket.

Felling it upon the fifth attempt.

“We go, now,” he gasped, taking a single moment to glance back. And when he did, Fu- he held no words for what he saw.

His fellow disciples were infested. With wounds, with a glow of poison, and with stampeding beasts.

Of the four, two were upright, succumbing to an advance from the point furthest from Fu. The far side, where a pack of [Spirit Apes] tore insects asunder on the approach. Mere paces from the cultivators, lobbying a fear that drove the buzzing, scuttling masses on with terrified fervour.

While the bow-wielder hurled obscenities at their frozen comrade, and brandished his bow as one might lob a blade at weeds.

Fu’s foot ground in hesitation, as he had caught himself from rushing to aid them. Trapped between the small difference he might make here, and surviving. As such he felt a growl settle in his throat, unused, but the product of this ultimate frustration.

Would I leave them to this fate?

His side was clear. Unmolested for twenty paces, where the next grou-

Fifteen paces now, at the appearance of a surging [Spirit Beetle].

Then a gasp surfaced as he planted his foot. So unnatural for this chaos. One raised by shock, and unsuited for the abundant horror.

“Brother!” came a warble.

Loud enough over the din that he spared a half look behind, seeing that the still man had cast himself from the ridge. Choosing to dash himself on the sheerness of rock rather than face the savagery that might await him.

🀦

Chaos had the time pass in uncounted, spent breaths. As now Fu clutched his bloodied arm, bounding around the myriad beasts.

Forward, his only thought, for any others might conjure great shame.

It was not a betrayal, in Fu’s eyes, and a reflection of morals in this place would no sooner bring him to greater safety than it would spell his ruin.

Feng’s ruin. Yuqi’s, and Yuling’s.

He bounded now with Hushi, as light as the [Air Qi] he embodied, on his tattered arm. The Bond’s teal limbs radiated to give it a monstrous appearance, intervening when springing beasts would rise, impressing their location so that Fu might weave from their path

A pair of cultivators spied his approach in the midst of their own battle, his next roadblock of the many already passed. Beset on two fronts by towering [Spirit Centipedes].

[Half Cloud Step] drove Fu into a mighty leap, and he drew a kick from the [Wind Phantom Strides], smashing into the rising head of his allies’ foes. The chitin there cracked upon impact, sending the near serpentine creature swaying to allow a blade to be thrust through its underside.

“Gratitude, brother!” broke one below, having Fu’s gut sink.

But he had already moved on, planting another foot atop the now-felled, falling beast and springing back to the ridge to thunder forward.

While these brothers remained to clash with the onslaught of beasts, never moving as he did towards the safety of numbers.

Hushi’s link screamed in warning not a moment after he had landed, bringing Fu to his knees, momentum sliding him across the skree in time to feel the rush of stone but a hair from the bridge of his nose.

A stench of [Poison Qi], accompanying the sizzle of acid.

Fu clenched his jaw as rogue droplets landed, biting two trails into the flesh above his bone with horrid speed.

In a lurch, he came to his feet, noting the [Spirit Ape] around twenty paces ahead. A larger sort, priming the torn shells of savaged insects in the same acid that had flown by. Whooping, as it launched another two.

The first flew wide, plummeting into the rising tide of Blight. The second, Fu lashed from the air. Wreathing his chain in foul acids, which continued on the third, and fifth. It sizzled as he reached the beast, with stray amounts biting again at his arm.

A pain close to the struggling of his [Inner Qi], which now ran quite dry.

His foe reared up, two shells in hand, and slammed them down. Fu somersaulted to the right, bringing him over open air, where he conjured his final cloud.

A raging [Intent] followed at his heels as he ignored the beast, breaking into a sprint the moment he landed again.

[Half Cloud Step] ended three paces later, and with it he was forced to rely on his inherent [Might[ to carry him. Much weakened without Qi to suffuse his body with strength. So now, when he battered a kick into the next [Spirit Roach], he caused barely a dent.

Fu cursed, and then his [Senses] alerted him to a presence behind. He ducked, and an acidic shell tore by, tearing through the insect he was to face. It ripped in twain,, revealing the mass of its brethren behind.

The destination.

He had known, prior to this, that they were outnumbered. But though he had eyes, Fu had failed to see.

Another shell tore by, perilously close to his neck as he lurched through the bisected insect for cover. He leapt, his foot touching upon the shell of another [Spirit Roach], one huddled, swarmed in an intrusion that beggared disbelief this ridge had ever been composed of earth and stone.

Their claim extended for half a li, or more. A scene that tricked his eyes, for many limbs writhed in their advance. The strange appendages at their fore, bending like willow. Their legs, myriad, and a sharper pink than that of their carapace.

Colours so thick it almost marred the tendrils of Blight rising in the cleft between forms, and the blots of azure ink that now appeared to devour them.