Four demonized hawks clawed at the barrier around the base. They had already dumped their payload of zombies and more demon summoners must be hidden in the desert because there were dozens of the horrors hammering away at the defenses.

Tian knew the barrier had been strengthened after the last attack. It was still holding. He didn’t believe it could possibly hold for much longer.

“Senior Redmane, can you drop the kids off somewhere reasonably safe?”

“Not without leaving the battlefront. You know how these heretics are. There are at least a hundred of ‘em buried in the sands all around the Depot.”

The Elder stood ramrod straight, hands clasped behind his back.

“Good thing you got those Heart Shield charms, then. If you suffer what should be a fatal hit, stay down. Am I understood?”

“Yes Elder!”

“Good. Now then. I suppose you can treat this as a sort of trial too. Remain silent, but watch closely.”

Senior Redmane flew higher, so high the zombies and birds were lost from sight. Then he folded in his wings and plunged downward. The elders must have used some magic to keep the juniors on the giant crane’s back. They would have gone flying away otherwise.

Elder Rui waved a horsehair whisk and started chanting. His voice was low, almost muttering, as he recited the words of a spell.

“The Ox Driving Boy cries for the Weaver Girl as nine nails pierce the grand roads and the eight stories pagoda collapses crushing the east wind and the Seven Heroes are scattered and driven before Six Lions and Five Tigers and the Four Stars of the generals grow dim and blacken under the rule proclaimed by the Three Suona of the heralds of the Minister who rules over Two Broken Paths which once were One whose perfection is denied for even the fallen path is a false escape…”

Redmane flared his broad white wings. Tian felt himself slam downwards into the ancient’s back, barely keeping his head up enough to see a blizzard of long feathers fly from the wings and stab downward. Screams started rising, howls of zombies, howls of demons screaming that they existed to hurt others, not to be hurt.

Elder Rui thrust his whisk up, as though he were piercing the twilight sky.

“Called now are the Generals of Thunder and Lightning! Called now are the Black and White Impermanences who restrain and castigate the wayward dead. Called now is the Army Eating Wolf and the Nine Sons of the Dragon, and the snake with two tails that brings drought and all the calamities of Heaven and Earth are called now, called now, DESCEND!”

Lighting struck out of a clear sky. Tian heard a strange roaring, crackling, snapping sound. He risked a look over Elder Redmane’s shoulder and saw utter chaos. Hundreds of man-tall feathers pierced demons, zombies and heretics alike, and prowling between them were horrors made of blue-white sky fire.

Elder Rui choked down a gasp. Tian saw the refined senior looking suddenly haggard. Then he pulled himself together, shoving a pill in his mouth.

“Disciple Sung, have you arrived?” His voice sounded conversational, but Tian knew better.

“A moment.” There was a long pause. “Windmother and I are here. Clear the field.”

“You heard her.”

“Windmother is always overbearing. See if I don’t rip out her tail feathers one of these days.” The giant crane grumbled, but he was already flapping hard and shifting away from the base.

There was something wrong. Tian could feel it, some twist of the elements down in the sands… no, by the rocky hill two miles from the Depot. They were passing near it. There was an elemental imbalance, too enormous and complicated for him to understand. He had the inexplicable sense of watching someone reach over their own head, open their jaw wider and wider, and pull it down over their neck, their shoulders, inverting their whole body through the terribly distended mouth.

“Brother Tian, do you feel that?”

“Yes, Sister. Elders, there is a terrible elemental imbalance over by the rocky hill over there. It feels very wrong, and it’s huge.”

“Eh, I don’t? How… The Dao charm is still on you. Shit. DISCIPLE SUNG, RUN! IT’S AN AMBUSH!”

Elder Rui swung his horsetail whisk, and thousands of brilliant threads, glistening like stars on a clear night, fell on the hill. The hill twisted and shuddered, breaking apart. Then it exploded, and a giant burst out.

Tian tried to understand the madness his eyes were reporting. Redmane was swearing and flapping hard, trying to gain height and distance while the giant unfolded. It was human, or at least somewhat human shaped. No head on its naked shoulders, and where its hands should have been were axes so broad, Tian thought you could build a house on them.

Redmane dove hard. A cut, black and twisting like ink in water, appeared in the air where they had been. A second after, the noise arrived sizzling and ripping, the sound of something that truly enjoyed destruction. The Giant was facing them now, one of its ax-hands down low. It had attacked them. Tian never saw it move. He would have died without knowing what killed him were it not for Elder Redmane.

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Two more giants exploded out of the earth. How they got to within a few miles of the base, Tian didn’t know. But they were there. Three monstrous, nature despising giants. And Elder Rui clearly didn’t care to fight even one of them.

Two more trails of darkness ripped across the sky. Away from them this time. There was a high pitched bird cry, and a sudden sharp note from a zither.

“Eunuch Hei, reveal yourself!”

Tian recognized the voice. Direct Disciple Sung was hard to forget.

“You dare call me that even when three of my pets surround you? Oh, your end will be the stuff of legends. And jokes. At least in Black Iron Gorge.”

With a single step, the heretic appeared on the shoulders of a distant giant. Tian couldn’t see him clearly in the twilight. There was an elaborate hat and complex, billowing robes. Beyond that, Eunuch Hei was wrapped in smoke and shadow.

“Funny, we already tell jokes about you on Ancient Crane Mountain, and you are still technically alive. Since you have come to our depot, why don’t you stay forever.” Her voice turned vicious.

“Oh no, you are the guest in my Redstone Wastes. I must insist that you stay.”

The giant swung an ax in an annihilating arc, but was met with a short trill of plucked strings.

Elder Redmane hadn’t slowed down for even a second. He was still clawing his way through the air, struggling to build speed and altitude. The giant was staying focused on them for now. There was more cunning to the ax blows than seemed right for a crude giant to have. The cuts would come aimed at the top of the bird’s shoulders, forcing him to dive or at least stop climbing. Others would force him to veer, losing speed. Elder Rui looked pale, focused on chanting and waving his horsetail whisk around. What he was casting, Tian didn’t know. He was staying low.

“Windmother is ready.” Redmane’s voice sounded strained, but calm.

Elder Rui didn’t answer. His chanting sped up, and the horsetail whisk flashed in eight directions.

“Junior…”

“Sealedundertheancientcompacttwentytimestentimesonetimetenmillionbillionlightingpunishalldemonsalldevilsbeheadthispriestbegstheheavens REBUKE!”

Redmane stopped dead in the air and spun in place. His long beak opened, and Tian could see a cylinder of fire, thick as a water barrel and bright as the sun, come burning down towards the headless giant. From the other direction came a brilliant twisting spear of green wind, almost as blinding bright as the fire. Brightest of all was the lighting falling from the clear sky. It descended like fraying threads, crackling and frying the air around it. They struck the giant at the same time.

Fire fed on the wood qi in the wind. Then the lightning fed into both, wind and fire combined. Something in the giant hated the lighting. He could feel the elements within it convulsing, melting away, unable to withstand some virtue of that heavenly fire.

The three Heavenly People combined their forces, and established the orthodoxy. The chaos was suppressed- and purged. The giant burned. A wide mouth opened across its belly, howling with pain. Vomiting black bile and fire onto the red sands. The giant slowly collapsed.

“One down!”

“Oh no, not my giant, what will I ever do? Oh wait, I have two more!” Hei’s high pitched voice creaked with a fury that didn’t match his words.

“Good! I can shatter them like your balls, freak!”

The axes chopped out, sending a stream of twisting darkness that blotted out the rising stars. Hei was aiming at something Tian couldn’t see. Direct Disciple Song, he assumed. Elder Rui crammed another pill into his mouth. He had collapsed onto Redmane’s back. The giant crane was panting too. It kept climbing. Not flying quite as hard, but still clearly determined to get clear of the axes.

Tian glanced over as Sister Hong. She didn’t do well under the open sky. It didn’t seem to be bothering her at the moment. Or perhaps there was just too much that was bothering her for her to fear falling upward. The assault on the ground hadn’t stopped. Redmane and the Elder had killed a lot of heretics, demons and zombies, but far from all of them.

The base array couldn’t hold. It would only take one axe blow. It wouldn’t even take that, if the zombies and demons were given more time. And once they got in, it would be a slaughter. There just weren’t enough cultivators on the base to stop them without the array.

The defenders were doing their best. Spells, arrows, even siege weapons were smashing out into the hoards around the base. Sister Li hadn’t lied. She and the crafters could make siege weapons, and had. Three Bow Ballistae, shooting arrows the size of spears. Trebuchets, hurling baskets of flaming tar and heavy stones. Talismans that flew up and showered rains of burning needles on the monsters below. The crafters fought their war with every bit of the bloody fury of the martial cultivators.

Tian knew the librarians were down there too. They had done their best months and years ago, equipping cultivators with the skills they needed. Now they got to display their own understanding. Somewhere down there was Sister Su, proving that her choice of spells and weapons were optimal. In a target rich environment like this, her fist-fulls of darts could hardly miss.

But the ones truly on the bleeding edge would be the martial artists. The brothers and sisters who adventured along the rivers and lakes, befriending the heroes of the age and battling the villains. Those chivalrous heroes who had long since left life and death to fate. Who could take in a maimed, feral child, and silently put food in his bowl and hand him a spoon. Who would always take time out of their own practice to help him. Who sometimes teased, but were never cruel. Who loved him.

The battle line was drawn in the shimmering light of the protective array, and in just a few more moments, it would be drawn in the blood of the West Town Temple. And others, but Tian’s compassion couldn’t stretch so far at the moment. He just wanted them to be safe. For the convent to be safe. For Auntie Wu to be safe, and Sister Li and Brother Long and Brother Zhong, and Doctor Pei, and everyone on his tea circuit to be safe. He even wanted Sima to be safe, because if that rat-fuck was still alive, then Tian’s brothers and sisters proably were too.

Most of all, he prayed Brother Fu was safe. The old man barely got to use his bed. It would be reasonable if he was out of the base now. Sensible. Completely justified.

He nearly crushed his hands from squeezing them so hard. Tian had no faith in the kindness of the world. Tian had no place on this battlefield, except maybe the hospital and given everything that was about to happen, maybe not there either.

Tian lurched to his feet. They were hundreds of feet up. Maybe even a couple thousand. Lots of time to figure out how he would survive after he jumped down. His brothers needed him. His father needed him. Like HELL he would sit around and watch!