The section of the wall where we were stationed showed some signs of damage from numerous battles over the centuries, but it had been well repaired, so it shouldn’t be significantly weaker than anywhere else on the wall. At least, that was what the guard captains told us. While the city guards, mostly level threes in this area, but with a few level four commanders, were spaced evenly, the various volunteers tended to group up a bit. I walked over to where the Ambassador was standing, looking out at the nearby fields, and grabbed a stack of level one vrooshkin leathers, making several quick attack talismans just to kill time. “Those crops are going to be destroyed.” he said.
“Yeah, the agriculture in this city will take a hit, but hopefully the alchemy can more than make up for it. With four hundred thousand demon cores, the market will soon be flooded with qi recovery pills.”
He nodded. “Assuming they have the other ingredients they need. Hopefully the Ji families and others can ship them in, though I won’t be surprised if our return cargo is at least half demon cores.”
I nodded and a gong was rung. “Enemy on the horizon!” a guard captain yelled, and at the edge of the forest, where it had been cleared almost four li from the city, I saw many hyena shaped creatures running out of the trees.
I brought out Xiao and Ryuu, telling Xiao that he could attack enemies if he wanted, but to protect me and the Ambassador. He nodded. “Yes, papa.” he said, and landed on the wall, preparing to attack.
Just before the demon flood arrived a barrier started to rise from the ground, and after a minute the walls grew enough to create a complete dome. I could tell at once that it was only late level three, however. With several level five cultivators in the city, it was unlikely that the barrier was meant to be weaker than level five, possibly even a level six if they could afford it, so the strength of the barrier was definitely being affected by the qi shortage.
“Hold!” called the guard captain, and I prepared several level one talismans. Soon a wave of creatures hit the barrier and the barrier responded by hitting them with a seemingly random attack from one of the five elements. “Fire!” he called and everyone fired off their attack. The ambassador threw severally weakened earth qi blasts at them and after my talismans hit them I did the same. While all of the ones that they hit were injured or killed, more quickly took up their position and hit the barrier again.
Everyone on the wall continued to launch attacks and the demons continued to die quickly, but I could feel the barrier at the point of impact start to weaken. The retribution function of the barrier likely had been designed with a full or almost full dragon vein in mind. If the barrier had started off at even early level five, even an attack of millions of vrooshkin wouldn’t have used so much qi that the barrier would lower to level four. But just like the barrier produced by my seal plate when it faced the level three attacks of the Demon Archer, both before and after the ghost took over, the barrier can be worn down by repeated attack. Liza had previously told me that it would take at least one hundred people feeding it qi to fuel a barrier one level higher than them, but the opposite was also true. One hundred people attacking the barrier simultaneously could weaken it to the point where it was effectively a level lower. With over ten thousand creatures attacking that one location, the barrier’s effective level would be slowly worn down until it dropped to two levels lower. That might allow a level three barrier to be beaten by the shear number of level one enemies.
After ten minutes, just as the enemy started to noticeably thin out and the number of corpses had formed a ten meter high wall around the parameter, cracks started to form in the barrier. The officers noticed this and ordered the soldiers to start using more energy intensive area of effect attacks, and the ambassador and I joined them. Xiao even joined it and threw lightning blasts at them, having waited until now to join the battle due to his lower qi reserves. The men seemed tired, as if their reserves were running low. Most of them were likely infected with the parasites, and our treatments likely hadn’t gotten to them yet.
Seeing that the demons might soon breach the barrier, I released the technique that was keeping me at level two and the qi from my soul sea rushed into me. The density of qi within me rapidly rose to liquid levels and a wave of liquid qi went through me, initiating another round of Rebirth. While my skin became covered in gray and black oil, I felt my level increase to around twenty percent of the way through Foundation, almost reaching the Early level. The fact that I had repaired many flaws likely allowed my qi to flow freely enough that the pressure could increase significantly increase.
I ignored the fact that I now smelled like rotten cabbage and kept firing, increasing the area of my AOE attacks. The vrooshkin seemed to be pushed back and the cracks in the barrier started to mend themselves. The men around me started wondering if the battle was almost over, when another gong sounded. “Second wave, incoming!” called a guard captain. “Spirit wolves and cats, around two hundred thousand level ones, fifty thousand level twos, and ten thousand level threes.”
The men started to curse. They were already starting to reach the end of their qi reserves, their meridians starting to hurt from the prolonged and heavy use of qi, but now we had to face another army that was almost as large as the first. Furthermore, spirit animals tended to not mindlessly attack, but use strategy and dodge incoming attacks. With the level threes among them, which were smart enough to act as officers and use proper strategy, the battle was about to get far tougher.
Someone near me started to complain that they hadn’t activated the city’s cannons yet. Every twenty meters or so, on raised platforms around the wall, there were level four or five relic weapons which could be used to defend the city against more powerful opponents. As one of the other soldiers were quick to point out to their panicking comrade, though, they used a large amount of qi to fire, and with the reserves not even being high enough to fully power the shield, they likely couldn’t fire the weapons at full power.
It only took another minute for the last of the vrooshkin to be killed, but by then the first of the spirit beasts had arrived. Rather than just run at the barrier, however, these lined up fifty meters away and launched various attacks at the barrier. All five elements were represented in their moves, as well as light, shadow, lightning, and sound. The men on the wall continued to attack them, but several of the level three spirit beasts stepped forward and put up barriers to block incoming attacks, preventing most of the attacks from hitting.
As several officers ran up to the mounted turrets, intending to power them from their own level four reserves, the Ambassador taking the nearest one, a soldier spoke up. “Where did they get proper training?” asked a man beside me as he desperately threw fire bolts at the enemy, only to have the attacks blocked. “Did they get cultivation manuals from somewhere?”
“One of those beasts in the slums probably provided it to them.” said another, and a few of the men nodded in agreement.
“Or that wolf tea shop owner that was infecting his people did it.” I responded. “After all, he has the money to do so. The ones in the slums can barely support themselves, much less spend the money to buy cultivation manuals. Or they killed hunters and took them. It would only take a single beast learning to read or finding a language or technique jade for all of them to have access to a proper cultivation technique.” A few of them seemed to switch to my side after that.
“Not sure it matters right now.” said the first man. “We can investigate after we stop them. Right now we need to kill them all before they make it into the city.” The cannons began to fire into their lines and several barriers were breached.
A few people from the medical division ran up and handed everyone bottles of level one or two recovery pills, from a realm below them, as level three pills were in short supply. I took my bottle of level two pills and swallowed half of them before putting the bottle into my bag. They didn’t quite refill my soul sea or dantian, but they got me back to eighty percent full. I did have three level three qi recovery pills from the demonic cultivators, as well as a regeneration pill, but I wanted to keep them in reserve for emergencies. Still, if I kept eating pills at that rate I might need a detox pill just so that I could deal with the side effects.
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After another minute cracks started to form on the city’s barrier. Their continuous attacks had managed to stress it enough that they would soon breach it. “Xiao, get ready.” I said, “They’ll be here soon.” He nodded and took his larger form.
When their concentrated attacks managed to enlarge one of the cracks enough that a hole appeared, spirit beasts started swarming into the barrier. Several level three enemies started attacking the edge of the broken area to expand it, and the guard captain ordered us to prepare for melee combat. The turrets targeted the swarm of enemies, but most of them managed to escape unharmed, as we lacked the numbers and fire rate needed to wipe them out. The level four fighters could only supply qi to the turrets at a quarter of the rate they were designed to be fed at, after all.
While none of the enemies could fly, many of the cats started climbing the walls, and the wolves started focusing their fire on a slight crack in the wall. This caused it to start expanding as pieces of rocks were blown loose. When one of the cats got near the top of the wall, however, Xaio leapt at him and plucked his eye from its socket. It screamed in pain and lost its grip on the wall, then fell the fifty meters to the ground below. It only took a few more seconds for another one to make it to the top of the wall and jump at a guard. Even with all of the eyes Xiao had plucked, he couldn’t hurt them fast enough.
I drew my sword and ran at a half blood wood leopard that was just reaching the top of the wall, slicing its throat and pushing it off the top of the wall. A pure blood ice tiger immediately replaced it. I lunged at it with my sword, but it dodged to the side then pounced on me. “Die human scum!” it yelled telepathically in the local language, and pinned me to the ground, knocking my sword from my hand. This one was clearly at the peak of level two, not level three, which could only mean that it possessed the semi-legendary bloodline of the White Tiger Mike had named his sect after.
“Don’t hurt my papa!” screamed Xaio, and dived for its face. The tiger managed to dodge, jumping off of me in the process, and counterattacked by firing ice shards from its mouth, but Xaio dodged them. He might be at a disadvantage power wise, not quite being at late level two yet, but he definitely had a speed advantage.
“Why would you defend this human, little one?” he asked, trying and failing to catch Xiao in his mouth. “Why call him your father?”
“He saved my life! He protects me and adopted me!” Xiao answered, and tried to attack his face again, only for the tiger to jump out of the way.
“Saved you? Is that the lie he told you? He probably bought you from the hunters that almost killed you, if not hurt you himself.” He swiped, but Xiao dodged.
“You know nothing.” responded Xaio, shaking his head. “Hyenas killed mama and papa, and he gave me pills and fed me. He even saved the rest of my tribe.”
“Kidnapped them, perhaps, to sell them later. Tell me, are they free, or did someone haul them all away to become pets?”
Xaio paused. “No, that can’t be true. His friends are nice. They wanted to be our friends.”
“They wanted to be your masters, for you to be their servants. You only see it as them being friendly because you are young and inexperienced. You don’t know humans the way I do. The way all of us do. Do you want to know my story?” He asked, and Xiao nodded.
I finished off the third cat since they started over the walls and overheard the end of their conversation. Just as he was about to tell a story about how humans had mistreated him, I threw a level three stun bolt at him. He collapsed to the ground and spasmed a bit, then lost consciousness. I sent him into my beast pouch.
“Why would you do that?” asked Xiao, flying over. “He was about to tell me why he hates humans.”
“He was about to tell you a group of lies meant to turn you against me. You don’t want to turn against me, do you?”
Xiao shook his head. “Of course not.”
I nodded. “And I don’t want you to turn against me either. You are my son and I love you. You know that, right?”
He nodded. “But what about him? You aren’t going to kill him, are you?”
I shook my head. “Only if he tries to kill me, or you, or someone I’m supposed to protect. When this is over I will even let him out of the bag and we can talk to him. Maybe then we can figure out together how the humans he knows hurt him and offer him a better life. Until then, though, we need to stop them from killing the people of this city.” A bobcat that was sparking with lightning jumped at me and I swung my sword two handed while stepping to the side, slicing him in half. The small amount of sparks that traveled up my blade and into my hands was barely noticeable. As that was the fourth move of the Dancing Dragon Technique, Ryuu flew over, but then saw that he had nothing left to do here and ran off to burn another enemy.
Xiao nodded and flew at another enemy as well. While I could tell that his movements were slower, likely because he was thinking about what just happened, he was only fighting a level one panther, so I returned to my own battle. He wouldn’t be at risk against such a weak opponent, after all.
I made my way towards the Ambassador who had moved from using the cannon to using his stone sword when a puma climbed in front of it. He was surrounded in the bodies of spirit beasts, but they kept coming at him. As he looked exhausted, likely being depleted from the use of the cannon, I fought my way over to him and threw him my three level three qi recovery pills. He quickly swallowed them, but I could tell that they hadn’t refilled him by much, perhaps restoring a third of the needed qi. “Are you injured, sir?” I asked and he shook his head. Twin tigers flanked us and we put our backs to each other as they approached, so that the beasts couldn’t attack either of us from behind.
The tiger leapt at me and I swung, but just as it leapt there was a loud explosion and the wall beneath me started to collapse. I lost my footing, fell to the ground and rolled, and the Ambassador sliced at his stumbling opponent. As mine got up I threw a fire bolt at it, then kicked it off of the wall towards the inside, where there were no walls to prevent falling, as most cultivators could survive jumping from that height. It hit the ground, landing on top of a barrel, and the fire spread across most of its body. One of the men inside ran over and ran a spear into its stomach before it could get up. I wasn’t sure whose kill that would be counted as for the purpose of receiving rewards, but I didn’t really care.
The Ambassador finished off his opponent and I ran for the stairs which lead into the courtyard, with him following. With canines now entering the city, it was even more important that we stop them from advancing, as one escaped enemy could kill hundreds of civilians before it was stopped. At my full speed it only took me a few seconds to join the battle.
For the next fifteen minutes I slaughtered dozens of wolves, coyotes, hyenas, and dingos, the variety of animals much wider than I thought. A few of them managed to make it to the gate with lead from the outer wall into the city, but the medical staff fought them off. While they were annoyed that they had to stop treating wounded to do so, it prevented the deaths of innocent civilians.
When we finally finished off the last of the canines, once again climbing the wall to deal with the cats, everyone was exhausted. I had managed to not use any more recovery pills, but both my soul sea and dantian were so low that they only had a few drops of liquid qi in each of them. If I lost any more my level would lower once more.
I sat down on the wall near the collapsed section, not caring that I was sitting in a puddle of blood, and started gathering qi as quickly as I could without creating a tribulation. Most of the men, even the Ambassador, were complaining about their meridians being overused during that fight, so most of them didn’t refill their reserves as well, in order to avoid further stress. Instead they were taking blood pills, brain pills, or both depending on what kind of meridians they had. I gave the Ambassador one each from my level two kit and took two myself. I also handed him a level two rainbow fruit, in case he was hungry, and ate a level one myself, as both of us were beyond the point where those fruits could effect us. I couldn’t risk the intoxicating effects of a level two at this time and wasn’t sure if a level three would cause him to experience such an effect.
I didn’t need the pills as badly as they did, as I had conditioned my meridians to carry large amounts of qi both to deal with the flow from my soul sea and to deal with the flow from the Dancing Dragon technique, but I didn’t need to reveal that to them. I would deal with what stress they had, and try to recover to full. While I meditated, focusing on refilling my soul sea first, I heard an explosion in the city. I flew up to get a better look, and saw smoke rising from the Spirit Beast Slums. Had they made it into the city in that area? The slums were near the western wall, but still part of the northern sector, so it was possible. Or it might be as the soldier had predicted earlier, and someone there was helping them.
“Sir.” I said, addressing the Ambassador. “Permission to go to deal with the enemy in that sector.”
The Ambassador floated off the ground as well. “No need to ask when I am going with you.” The nearby guard captain was ordering a group of men to go to that area to investigate, so I doubted that he would care if we went as well, and the Ambassador and I flew in that direction.
