Book 12: Chapter 15: Assistance
“Do you think we should help them?” asked Kho Jaw-Long as he watched the battle below with idle interest.
Feng Ming glanced at his old friend before returning to his own evaluation of the clash between humanity and spirit beasts below. His first instinct, one honed by thousands of years as a cultivator, was that they shouldn’t help. Cultivators rarely intervened unless their own interests were at stake. There was also an implicit understanding that they shouldn’t intervene. After all, if a nascent soul cultivator stopped a fight too soon, there was every possibility that they would deny a junior the opportunity to find an inspiration or battle-driven insight. Of course, that instinct had been honed during years when spirit beasts weren’t trying to kill every human being. He still found himself hesitating. The mortals and cultivators below seemed to be holding their own. Part of him wanted to see if they could defeat the spirit beasts without aid. He sighed. Allowing capable fighters to die just to satisfy his curiosity was counterproductive.
“I suppose we should do something,” said Feng Ming. “Let’s make this quick. We don’t have much farther south to go. I want to wrap up this little mission and head north again. Sen must be on the march by now. I’m curious to see how he’s handled things.”
“In retrospect, I think sticking Sen with all those political problems might have been—” Kho paused as he thought. “Ill-advised.”
“He needed to learn. Better that he learns those lessons on somewhat friendly ground.”
“I’m not sure how friendly those grounds were.”
“You’re probably right. Let’s say, less actively hostile ground.”
“Hmmm. How do we want to handle this?” asked Kho, waving a hand at the battle.
“You take the north, and I’ll take the south?” asked Feng Ming.
The city below was completely surrounded by spirit beasts. So, it wasn’t like there was an ideal choice for where to start their attack.“That seems good enough,” answered Kho.
The pair began their descent together before splitting apart to focus on their respective areas of the battle. Feng Ming’s irritation rose as he neared the battle below. If he’d been far from mortals, this fight would have been much easier for him. In all likelihood, he could have handled it by himself. But he was not far from mortals, which meant he had to restrain himself in myriad ways. He couldn’t truly unleash his killing intent or his spiritual sense. The full force of either could easily kill every mortal and cultivator below core formation in the city. He could direct both with a fair level of precision, but not enough precision.
He'd heard about the way Sen could narrow his killing intent to such a degree that he could impose the entirety of it on one person in a crowd. The same held for the soul technique that hermit dragon had taught the boy. He honestly didn’t know how Sen could do that. It must be an innate talent
, thought Feng Ming. Sen might be willing to work harder than anyone else, but he just hadn’t had the kind of time necessary for that to be the result of hard work alone. Especially given everything else he’d been forced to learn and do in recent years just to survive. Shaking his head, he put those thoughts away. That was a mystery for another time.A fraction of his spiritual sense passed over the spirit beasts below. He took great care to keep it well clear of the city proper. Even at that reduced strength, he saw some of the spirit beasts collapse, while others staggered. If nothing else, it gave the cultivators and mortals on the walls an opening to launch attacks. His purpose had been to locate the most powerful spirit beasts on the field. They were the true threat, since they were directing the less intelligent spirit beasts. He formed wind blades and sent them hurtling downward. While it all felt slow to him, it happened fast enough that he killed most of the spirit beasts he’d targeted, along with any spirit beasts that happened to be within fifty feet of them. He noted where his attacks had failed. I guess I’ll have to go deal with those spirit beasts in person, he thought with an inward smile. It might even be briefly amusing.
He hardened air around him in a sphere as panicked spirit beasts started launching attacks at him. It was even kind of pretty as lightning, fire, and water techniques enveloped the sphere. While the more powerful spirit beasts focused their attacks on him, he sent down wind blades by the hundreds to cull their ranks. When that grew boring, he replaced wind blades with tiny, incredibly compressed tornadoes that had hardened threads of air by thousands inside of them. Anything dragged into those techniques was ripped apart by the pressure or pulped by the hardened threads. By the time he actually landed on the ground, he estimated he’d killed two or three thousand spirit beasts. Not bad for ten seconds of work, he thought.
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The almost constant sound of thunder from the far side of the city told him that Kho had gotten started as well. He almost felt a surge of pity for the spirit beasts that would fall to his friend’s lightning attacks. Having been on the receiving end of that kind of elementary fury several dozen times in his long life, Feng Ming knew exactly how painful it would be to die to such an attack. Then again, the spirit beasts had started this fight. They couldn’t really complain when it didn’t go their way. He took a moment to straighten his robes as tornadoes and wind blades killed all of the nearby spirit beasts except for one.
For a moment, he thought one of those spirit oxen that Sen had somehow befriended had taken on a mostly human shape. After a longer look, though, he decided it was probably some kind of cow before it changed its form. It was looking around at all the nearby carnage with its nostrils flared. Maybe it was a bull, thought Feng Ming.
“Who are you?” demanded the bull.
“That’s a long story. Far longer than you have left in your life. You can just call me Fate’s Razor.”
Much of the hostility that had been radiating from the bull was replaced by an almost physical aura of fear.
“That’s impossible. He’s far to the north,” said the bull, sounding more like he hoped it was true than that he believed it was true.
“Oh, I was,” said Feng Ming, slowly covering the distance between them. “The weather here is just so nice, though. I thought I’d pay a visit. And what do I find? A bunch of spirit beasts causing trouble. I guess that king of yours didn’t take me seriously when I warned him. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to kill all of you and see if that convinces him.”
“Even you don’t have that much power,” said the bull.
“Don’t I?”
Feng Ming allowed his killing intent to flare out behind him, where several of the more powerful spirit beasts had tried to converge for an attack on his back. He wasn’t sure if they were trying some kind of very poorly planned ambush or just assumed they’d be able to overwhelm him. There were animal roars and nearly human screams that descended into choked gurgles as thousands of wind blades no wider than a thumbnail attacked them from every conceivable angle. The sight of its allies being cut down in such gruesome fashion was too much for the bull, and it charged. Two lances of metal qi burst forth from its horns. Feng Ming exhaled in exasperation. Metal qi was normally a good counter to air, but his jian shattered the technique. That was followed by the sound of bone shattering as his fist connected with the bull’s skull.
What came after that wasn’t really a fight. With an effort of will, he formed hundreds of wind blades that began circling around him. He increased their speed until there was a dull roar drowning out practically all other sounds. Then, he activated his qinggong technique to move back and forth on the battlefield, dragging all of his windblades with him. He allowed a few of the weaker spirit beasts to escape so they could report the carnage, but only a very few. When he finally dismissed his technique, everything in sight was covered in blood, viscera, and bone fragments. When the wind shifted, it carried the scent of charred meat and burned hair. That told him everything he needed to know about how things were going on Kho’s side of the city.
He felt a flash of irritation as cultivators from the city flew out and landed nearby. He liked to take a few minutes after a battle to settle himself. The last thing he wanted to do was be nice to people. The one nascent soul cultivator among the freshly arrived cultivators stepped forward. He felt her qi and spiritual sense try to examine him. He turned and gave the woman a chilly smile.
“I’d stop doing that if I were you,” he said. “Otherwise, I might change my mind and let you find out why you don’t want to do that.”
Her expression didn’t change, but he felt her jerk back her qi and spiritual sense.
He nodded at her and said, “Wise.”
“Honored cultivator, we are grateful for your timely assistance. You and your companion,” she said, looking up to where Kho was descending.
Feng Ming gave the other man an amused look and said, “She’s grateful for our assistance.”
Kho was normally a very even-tempered man, but he had just been in battle. His blood was still up. Everyone could tell by the look of withering disdain he directed at the woman. A look that would have shattered the will of most people.
“Our assistance, is it?” asked Kho. “I find that a provocative way to describe it.”
Feng had to give the woman credit. She bore up under Kho’s glare remarkably well. The cultivators who had come with her were another story. They all looked ready to find the nearest hole to hide in.
“Who are you to speak to me in this way?” demanded the woman.
“I suppose we did forget to introduce ourselves while she was diminishing our contributions,” said Kho, his expression going stony. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Kho Jaw-Long.”
There was absolute silence following that revelation. Amused by the look of horror on the woman’s face, Feng let the silence stand for longer than necessary before he broke it with an inappropriately cheerful tone.
“And I am Feng Ming. We come with news. You won’t like it,” he said before his face also went hard, “but you will, by the heavens, live with it.”