Tian slammed into consciousness driven by the screams of dozens of monstrous insects. Like spiders stretched out flat- ten legs instead of eight, and their mandibles stretched out far too long. Worse, they were the size of large dogs. They didn’t give him the same prickly feeling as Gu, it was a sort of sinking feeling, cold, sticky. An overabundance of yin giving rise to, if not demons, monsters much like them.
There were a few dozen of them, smashing into the array with endless insect fury. Their screams were a high pitched keening noise that shook the eardrums and threatened to overwhelm sleep-sodden minds. Tian was up and out of his tent a half second after they first impacted the array. The sound of monstrous things hitting a spell array was one his barely conscious mind had no trouble interpreting.
He raked his eyes across the campsite. Liren was up and ready to go, spear in hand. Brother Wang was coming out of his tent. Sister Su was coming out of hers on her crutches. The daoists from the Courtyard were still in their tents, but he could feel qi twisting and moving around them. They were awake, and readying themselves.
The insects started spitting something orange and viscous against the shivering, pale blue array. Whatever it was, it hissed and smoked as it slid down the barrier. The shivering of the array got worse. The shrieking intensified, the spider-things scrabbling at the array with almost desperate ferocity. Insect hate making mandibles snap like broken arms. The daoists from the Courtyard were still not out of their tents.
“Sister Su, can you use your darts through this array?” Tian asked. His voice was calmer than he expected it to be. It was just like his nightmares. It was just like the memories he slid back into. It was so familiar, it was calming. The bad thing was happening. He didn’t have to fear it coming, it was already here. Tian knew how to live in the bad place.
“I don’t know. They never said. I might destroy it from the inside if I use them now.” She had them out, though, and the little yellow array flag she had used before.
“Fellow Daoists, can we attack through the array, or will we bring it down faster? Incidentally, I’d get out of your tents now if you ever want the opportunity to do so in the future.” Tian raised his voice over the screaming insects.
“No, that sort of one way array requires far too many expensive materials and a Heaven Watching Scholar to set up. No need to panic. We are very used to dealing with ten-leg horrors.” The doughy daoist strode out of his tent, covered in shimmering, glittering light. He held a horsetail whisk in one hand, and a fistfull of talismans in the other.
Doughy did a double take looking at the daoists from the Ancient Crane Monastery. “Never mind us, are you ready for a fight?”
They all looked around at each other. “Yes?” Hong vaguely waved her spear in the air. “What else do we need?”
“What in heaven’s name are you wear- wait! What’s that?” Oily pointed, shifting from superior to alarmed in a single word. His long finger pointed at the acid spitting ten-leg horrors. “What is that orange stuff?”
He wasn’t alone. All the daoists from the Courtyard gave the sticky bile looks ranging from disturbed to horrified. Or perhaps they were looking at the way the array was shimmering, visibly corroding with every spit of acid.
Tian shared a moment of instant, perfect psychic connection with all of his sectmates, then glanced at the Sky Grace Crane.
“Make ready. Sister Su, open the way. Sister Hong will be first in the gap, then me, then Brother Wang. Disciples from the Courtyard, help where you can.” Tian gave some basic instructions. They were martial cultivators of the Ancient Crane Monastery. Detailed commands were neither needed nor wanted. He had already warned them it was coming. Everything else was just survival. He didn’t need to teach them that.
The crane flapped its white wings and leapt into the air. Tian watched it fight for altitude, climbing until it was practically lost in the canopy. The array wasn’t a dome, it was a wall.
“Interesting. Sister Su, see if you can attack without destroying the barrier.”
“You can’t just-” One of the daoists from the courtyard yelled something, but Tian was focused on the enemy.
“Yes, Brother Tian.”
She threw a fistfull of crude rock darts almost straight up. Then another. Then another. She looked over at the shuddering, creaking barrier and the ten-leg horrors behind it. There was a long roll of thunder and with the swing of a little yellow array flag, the darts came hammering down.
It was a massacre.
There was no other word for it. The darts hit harder than anything Tian had ever seen from a Level Nine, and there were at least twenty of them in each salvo. Sister Su didn’t aim too precisely. The ten-leg horrors were coming in a solid front from the north, barely a couple of feet between them. So the darts fell, and the bug-things exploded. A wave of gore slapped into the array- and stuck. Then burned.
Trapped under a collapsing array, a swarm of monsters coming. Untrustworthy people behind him, his brothers and sisters beside him. Counting on him. Just like coming home. Perhaps he had never left.
“DAMN! Five Point Earth Building Formation, I’m the formation eye!” Doughy roared out. The camp’s defensive array broke, peeling back from the spray of gore, and exploding array nodes as it went. The gore sputtered and burned where it landed, including on the ten-leg horrors, who screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed but it was just noise and he had a job to do.
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“Don’t step in the gore.” Tian’s voice was steady.
“No, really?” Hong snarled. Then with a shout, she shot forward through the gap in the array. The surviving ten-leg horrors didn’t like the gore any more than the array did, and were struggling to stay clear. Hong kicked a rock ahead of her, then took a little hopping step. Her toes landed on the rock just as it set down in the vile remains, then she was up and off again, leaping to a clear patch of earth to the left of a horror.
Her long spear flashed out, red tassel flying, drilling into the side of the horror’s head. It went rigid, twitched, then collapsed. She yanked the spearhead clear, flicked the gore off of it, and pressed on.
Tian was already in motion behind her. He didn’t have a handy rock, but he did have his rope dart. A quick fling snagged the body of a dead horror, the rope binding it like a vine. Light Body Heavy Hands, a hard jump and a pull, and he zipped through the air so fast, he was quite hard to see. Still in the air, he unbound his rope dart, found his target, and flung the dart down. At the same moment, he smoothly transitioned back to his full weight.
He didn’t notice the way the spells were starting to overlap. The flow and transition between them had become so seamless, so natural after constant practice, they had begun to run together. Just a little bit. But it was still there.
The rope dart smashed down on the horror’s head. Tian made the rope go rigid. He pressed his feet on either side of the rope and treating it like a long pole, he jumped. Hunting for his next target from above.
He had jumped so high, the battle scene was displayed below him like he was a strategist looking at his go board. Liren was tearing through the bugs, never needing more than a single strike. She was going to run out of targets soon. Sister Su’s initial barrage had shattered the mob of horrors into isolated clumps. Tian didn’t know if they had any concept of teamwork or tactics. Liren didn’t give them any time to try any.
Brother Wang advanced steadily, Sister Su on a crutch behind him. Every step made her flinch, but she pressed on. Her right hand flicked up and down. Up, and a dart appeared. Down, and a bug died. Brother Wang didn’t bother with offence. He used the long pick on the back of his hammer to flick up the corpses of horrors, blocking any incoming sprays of bile. Nothing would touch Sister Su so long as Wang lived. He looked right at home too.
The heretics always targeted the warehouses. The quartermasters only looked like they had a cushy job. Nobody left the wasteland without seeing blood.
Sister Lin finally displayed her skill. No reluctance now. She pulled out a strange bow, a thing made of horn and double curves, barely a few feet long, that she pulled back to a point where it looked like it should have snapped in half. The arrows she shot made whistling noises as they rushed through the air before burying themselves up to the fletching inside the ten-leg horrors. She never needed a second arrow. Tian couldn’t quite spot what they were doing, but he could see the bodies deforming roughly where the arrow heads should be.
The elements twisted back at the base camp. Tian glanced over at the daoists from the Courtyard. Then blinked. They had raised a functional earthwork in bare seconds. He could see them gripping spirit stones and running spells through their compasses, pouring power into a formation formed from the five of them working in concert. An entirely new type of art to Tian.
If there were more bugs, the earthworks would absorb the bile effectively, and give the daoists a protected position to launch attacks from. It might lack offence, but that was fine. They were array masters. Tian had been reminded again and again- you don’t give an array master time to get ready. If they can turtle up- you lose. Because once they have time to build their array and power it, the power they can unleash is far beyond what an equivalent number of ordinary cultivators could manage.
“They are fighting with spirit crystals. That’s their ammunition- the power for all these arrays comes from spirit stones and rare materials. No wonder everyone says they are rich. All that blather about strategy is just beating the enemy to death with money!”
Tian saw a likely looking target below and flung his dart at it. The dart pierced the horror’s back, and Tian rode the stiff rope down. By the time he touched ground again, the horrors were dead. He quickly shook off the gore from his dart, then just to be sure, ran some water over it. Satisfied, he stowed it back in his storage ring, then looked over at the decent little fortification the courtyard had put together.
“Apologies, fellow Daoists. It seems we made you waste your money. Would you like to clear the next bunch on your own?”
“Funny you should say that, Daoist Tian,” Doughy’s voice was grim. “Ten-leg horrors release a smell when they die that draws in more of their kind. The correct way to fight them, is to bury or burn them. Freezing them would also work, for a short while.”
Tian cocked his head to one side. “Seems like useful information to share before a fight. Oh well. What’s the range?”
Screeching sounds were coming from the forest. Not too far away, either.
“What?”
“What is the range of the smell? It can’t possibly cover the whole forest, or none of you would ever leave alive.”
“How the hell should- roughly half a mile?! That’s a few hundred, at this time of year.” Doughy kept wrenching his glare away from Tian to try and find the horrors, but it always slid back again.
The disorienting screams got louder. They weren’t far away now.
“What do they eat?” Hong asked. Tian’s sect mates casually made their way over to the earthworks, Brother Wang thoughtfully assisting Sister Su. She seemed much better when she could use both her cane and his arm. She was almost smiling.
“Does that really matter right now?”
“It might.” Hong nodded sagely as she settled in. There was a little trench at the foot of the wall, lowering their elevation. Tian couldn’t understand it until he was standing in it. Reduced target area. The array masters didn’t give a damn about how far they could reach with anything powered by muscles.
“They eat eeeeeverything, even trees. They just turn everything into soup and slurp it up!” Daoist Mei made a loud slurping noise, then giggled. “They don’t usually spit, though. That’s new!”
Ahah. There had been no “roof” to the array around the camp. The walls would hold out against the physical attacks well enough, and then the daoists from the courtyard would send their attacks up and over the wall, just like Sister Su did. Except they would use fire or earth, to stop the dissolving fluids from spraying everywhere and summoning more monsters. Simple, but effective. No wonder they weren’t in a rush to jump out of their tents. They thought they had everything well in hand.
Tian sighed lightly. He fought down the urge to say something rude. Beating down the Courtyard’s younger generation was one thing, but there was a time and a place. They were already sweating, knuckles turning white on their compasses. He opted for encouragement instead.
“Well, you can’t plan for everything. I’m sure you will all adapt well to the sudden changes that are sure to come. Don’t worry too much and just do your best. If something goes wrong, us Cranes will fly away. You can concentrate on saving yourselves.”