Tian quickly got the flying sword under his feet and caught Hong as she fell.
“Heavens, you are so light.”
“Yes, now is the time to talk about that. Did you know the flying boat was going to blow up?”
“Did I know the flying boat that I didn’t know existed until my darts hit the ward would blow up if we overloaded the wards and killed Lian? Not before we overloaded the wards and killed Lian. But the energy build up was pretty obvious. Where are we? I swear we weren’t on that boat for even a minute.” Tian looked around, seeing only the steppes. On the far distant horizon to the south there was a dense clump of clouds. Maybe it was the smoke from the potter’s quarters in Burning Flag City?
“It was accelerating the whole time. Whatever spell was propelling it also overloaded. We were lucky the junk was angled up, not down.” Liren shrugged. Carrying her in his arms was awkward, but he suspected that he would never hear the end of it if he appeared in public with his dao companion “Standing on his head.”
Tian set off for the big cloud pile to the south. “Hope Han is okay.”
“If he isn’t… well, we probably should flee the country and keep running until we are entirely out of the Wasteland of Song, however big that is.”
The image of Venerable Merciless, Han’s ancestor, flashed through Tian’s mind. Xiezhi may be considered auspicious generally, but anything with a bad temper, claws, fangs, horns, and an unfathomable depth of cultivation, would be extremely inauspicious for the people who let his grandson die. Especially after he paid them in advance with a powerful spear.
“Speaking of the venerable, did you know the spear could pierce spells that way?’
“Kinda? It’s hard to explain since you don’t follow a weapon dao.” Liren stared out over the grassland for a few seconds. “It’s like the spear tells you how it wants to be used. Mostly this isn’t a complicated thing. It’s a spear, it wants to stab.”
Tian nodded along.
“But a military spear wants to stab differently from a hunting spear, and a spear used to hunt boar will feel different compared to one used to hunt tigers. I’m learning that the more advanced the spear, the more you get the feeling about how it wants to be used. This spear wants to be on the attack. It wants to bring an end to things fast. Straightforward, no games, just directly kill. To that end, it will go through whatever it needs to.”
“Huh. A spear with its own dao.”
“It’s not that deep. It’s a long spear made with a very dense horn that comes to a hellish sharp point. After breaking through the ward, I didn’t have the qi to run any arts through it. But the nice thing about a spear is, even if you aren’t using it properly, you can still stab someone in the head with it. Just keep pressing forward, and thrust. And… I’ve been picking apart wards for a while now. Not too hard to see where the qi knots together, then punch through it.”
Tian nodded softly at that, still not entirely sure about how he felt. He would meditate on this later.
“That was new with the darts. I saw you practicing controlling them earlier, but turning them into one dense javelin was new.”
“It’s not dense. It’s the opposite. The idea is that instead of one big, heavy thing hitting something and trying to punch through, you have lots of small, fast things hitting a point so fast, they essentially drill through it.” Tian shrugged. “I don’t know if it is better or worse than the one-heavy-thing method, but it’s what I’ve got.”
“It worked well enough. What was that bit about heaven sealing acupuncture or whatever?”
“We were being observed. The longer people are confused about my arts, the better. I just yelled whatever crap came to mind, trying to make people think I’m an idiot. It worked. At least the heretic believed it. He tried to disguise his acupoints, rather than counter-attack. It seems Lian believed it too.” Tian paused, an awful thought intruding. “How sure are we that we did kill Lian? Any chance that was a decoy?”
“His storage ring holds six times what the sect issued ones do, and it’s packed tight. There are so many spirit stones in there, we could go into closed door cultivation for years without any trouble. If it’s a decoy, all I can say is that they spent enough on it!”
“Shame about the junk. It would have been perfect.” Tian smiled. “Though I’d miss you rowing.”
“I was going to say almost the same thing. I like rowing the boat. I’d be bored just sitting there. It gets to be kind of meditative, your body just moving and feeling the river as your other senses take in the rest of the world.”
They reached Burning Flag City in time to catch the last of the fighting. Tian made a beeline for the courtyard in the City Lord’s manor, as that’s where the wounded would be coming.
Han stood at the entrance, spear in one hand, his sword jabbed into a flowerbed next to him. Both clearly well used. He looked banged up, but alive. There were numerous mortals dead around him, several in varying states of rapid decay, and the sack Tian had left with him looked half empty.
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“Liren, could I trouble you to check on Lian’s old place? Those captives have to be somewhere.”
“Good thinking. I’m on it.” Liren dashed off.
“To those wounded in the fighting, come see me at my courtyard.” Tian cast his words over the city with qi, then looked over at Han. “You did well. Very well.”
Han bowed ninety degrees, cupping his hand. “Thanks to you.” His dirty hands smudged the card.
“This wasn’t your first real battle. I can tell.” Tian smiled a little.
Han pulled out his slate and brush. “The first one I fought on my own, and where I can tell the heavens and the earth that I didn’t just survive, I won.”
“The heavens and the earth? Do they care? Should you care if they care?” Tian shook his head. The number of vain idiots in the world never ceased to shock him. The fact that he was wearing an embroidered robe of shimmering gold had temporarily escaped his memory. “Han, tell yourself. You fought. You won. You saved lives and killed heretics and killed gu and helped save a city, maybe even helped save the whole southlands. At the very least, you helped buy the city more time. The heavens and the earth are beyond your control. Tell yourself, and stand proud.”
The first of the wounded Earthly cultivators staggered to the gate. She had a hand pressed to the side of her chest, her dusty pink robes already turning black around the wound. “Three dead heretics, and I don’t know how many gu. The Senior's gu powder is unparalleled!”
It was a blend he learned from Voidcatcher, and made from herbs in the old toad’s garden. It would be strange if it didn’t work. But he just cupped his hands and bowed slightly. “Miss has worked hard. Come in and lie down on the mat. I should have you on your feet again soon enough.”
The battle hadn’t been one-sided. The heretics had snuck in a lot of Gu, and even with good gu powder available, they were nasty, sneaky, vicious things to fight. A few of the defenders had to be carried in more dead than alive, and a few more would have proof of their valor on their skin for the rest of their lives. Not one sided, but between Tian’s warning, the gu powder, and the defender’s sheer ferocity, the heretic’s losses were far worse than the orthodox cultivators. He’d kept them alive.
“A Heavenly Realm doctor. A Heavenly Realm doctor standing behind me. How could I not fight all out?” This from a middle aged man even shorter than Tian, who thoughtfully brought the finger that had been bitten off by something with far too many legs. Tian pulled away the curse energy on the finger, feeding it to the Hell Suppressing Body as a little snack, then did the same for the curse energy within the cultivator. Reattaching the finger was quick work, stitching up the tears in the man’s guts was less so. The little cultivator had shallow cultivation for his level, and his level was middling. Nevertheless, he fought, killed heretics, and lived. Tian honored him for that.
“Since I’m here anyway, you seem to have some old damage to your Governing meridian. Fortunately, it’s just a bit of corrosion, and can be healed.” Tian weighed the amount of time it would take to prepare proper medicine against the amount of work he would have in the next few days, and shook his head. “Here. Goatsneeze leaves. Don’t let the small size fool you, these three leaves have more vital energy in them than your whole body does. Steep them in barely simmering water, just starting to have bubbles reaching the surface of the kettle, for at least twenty minutes and up to an hour. Drink the entire tisane, one pot a day. Repeat until the leaves lose their potency. Don’t try to save them for later emergencies. You won’t heal properly if you do, and I will be annoyed.”
The middle aged man became agitated and started blurbling some nonsense about life saving favor, but Tian didn’t have time to listen. There were only so many earthly cultivators, but the mortals had taken hundreds of civilian casualties, and their hospitals were overwhelmed. He couldn’t fix the wounded with his medicine, but he could clear out infections and handle surgery far better than any mortal doctor.
“Liren? What’s the situation over there?” Tian swapped his golden robes of mermaid silk for drab blue linens. Suitable for surgery or scrubbing pots alike.
“Bad, very bad, but stable. How is it over there?”
“About to start treating the mortals. Do the captives need medical attention?”
“Yes. But they aren’t going to get worse in the next few hours. Remember to tamp down your aura, keep your vital energy and qi restrained.”
“Yes, yes.” Tian smiled, and let the spell go. The Earthly Realm warriors had fought like tigers. For wandering cultivators, the chance to fight with Heavenly support, especially Heavenly medical support, was a once in a lifetime opportunity. For the mortal grandmasters, barely touching the threshold of an immortal’s vital energy, it was something their descendants could boast about for a hundred generations. The grace and favor of a senior was insanely precious in the Ancient Crane Monastery. How much more so to these wandering cultivators? He would have to do something for them, not just the middle aged man.
“Grandpa? What was that green thing I swallowed?”
Not the time, but it’s a good thing. Well. A bit of a good thing. Like… one extra peanut in a bowl of mixed nuts the size of a bathtub or something. Like I said, it will keep.
“Han, follow me. You have no interest in the medical arts, but you should learn a little bit anyway, just so you can look after yourself.”
Tian looked over his shoulder at his battered student. “A useful skill, for a man of the rivers and lakes. Particularly one with a strong sense of justice.”
Han looked like he wanted to argue, but had to stop for a moment when he saw the state his sword and spear were in. Carefully cleaning them, he sheathed his sword, dusted himself off, and lifted his spear to his shoulder.
Tian had him stand well back and just observe as he worked, explaining what he was doing as he went from hospital to hospital. Many were just tents in a square, or someone’s house that had been given over to the dying because the real hospitals had overflowed with those who could still be saved. If only the doctors could move quickly enough, anyway. Or if there were more of them.
“Where are the Boruski? I thought they would attack in the chaos?”
He could feel Liren’s grim amusement through their connection. “Not quite enough chaos for them to make their move. A ton of tribes just ‘loitering’ a few hours out, but I’m seeing a fair-few birds flying in their direction. The cultivators and martial artists suppressed the heretics without the army needing to get involved, so if the tribes make a move, they will pay a bloody price. We intercepted that Heavenly cultivator before he could really cause havoc, and it looks like they were counting on his success. Finish up there, then come to the Long Family compound. The captives weren’t slaves. They were sacrifices. They are weapons. I just hope you can save them.”