There was a blinding flash, and Liren was standing next to the younger Long brother. She had the horn spear in her hand, stabbing upwards from a bare few feet away, trying to burrow her hate from his guts into his chest. A tortoise shell made of amber light sprang into existence around him, then shattered, then a mirror appeared in front of the spear, and that stopped her thrust for a moment before it too shattered. Tian couldn’t follow her fight beyond that point. He had his own to manage.
He opted to ride Stonecutter’s leaf. The sword controlling art worked just as well on it, and it had the great advantage of not being a sword. Though, it was a little slower. He smiled a little sadly at the thought. Was it so wrong to just enjoy life? To take things slowly, to treasure the quiet moments?
The heretics looked almost surprised when he rose to meet them. “Good heavens, a duck has appeared carrying a leek on its back. Well, even if I can’t butcher it yet, I can still pull off a leg or something.” The golden eyed merchant reached out, his hand heavy with rings and some art that felt like thousands of tiny chewing knives.
“His mind is so ruined, he can’t tell his killer from a duck. Heresy is a terrible thing,” Tian reached towards the hand with a casual stretch, as though he were going to clasp it. Then he clenched his fist, calling a glass orb into his hand as he did. A cloud of poison exploded outwards, blinding purple smoke, yards upon yards of it, spreading and covering Tian and the heretical merchant.
Tian had no illusion that the poison would kill the heretic. It was those golden eyes. Something about them made him nervous. Tian dropped below the poison cloud, intending to get behind the merchant before rising up again. He could feel spells homing in on him, defensive tools springing into life on the merchant, everything moving towards him. And when things were in motion, he should be still. Well, not completely still. He should turn, flow, and allow the enemy to defeat themselves.
He had been aiming for the merchant’s back. The merchant had no intention of letting Tian take his back, and wasn’t so sloppy as to lose his enemy in a mere cloud of poison. Tian rose to find a foot stomping down on his head. There was some art to it, he could feel the crushing weight of it falling like a mountain on him. So he went with it, grabbing the foot and letting it push him down, accelerating the force downwards, and not stopping when the leg reached full extension.
Tian had wondered what would happen if you yanked one of the feet of someone standing on a flying tool. Apparently, they do an involuntary split, and aren’t quiet about it. One foot was stuck on the human-leather rug, the other pulled out and down by a remarkably heavy Tian. He was fairly sure he felt something snap in the leg. Not a bone, a tendon. Crippling in the Earthly Realm, it was merely painful in the Heavenly. Or, more charitably, it could be considered a start.
The other heretics weren’t about to miss the chance to kill him while he was distracted. Spells came flying in, a dagger that moved as though it had eyes, a trio of insects that seemed to combine the most upsetting qualities of both wasps and spiders, and most eerily, a nearly invisible ghost that was more curse than lost soul. Tian decided that he didn’t care to test his ability to eat curses quite that hard so early in the battle. Instead, he kept his momentum moving, continuing to accelerate downwards. Until he stopped sharply, planting his feet and leaning back as he swung the golden-eyed merchant by his already torn leg. By no coincidence whatsoever, the merchant’s involuntarily floppy body crossed paths with the incoming attacks.
The fireball simply exploded on the merchant. The insects dodged around the improvised swatter, but the knife bounced off. The ghost-curse passed through his body, making several hidden devices shiver and contort below the merchant’s robes, ripping a fresh scream from him as it went. If the torn ligament was a scream of pain, this one was equal parts pain and horror. The curse looked a bit more solid, now, the hunger on its face growing more intense, more vicious.
Tian kept falling back, trying to twist himself around to keep making use of his human shield, but the Gu were too quick, and the ghost-curse was faster still. The curse landed first, reaching for his heart with a silent cry, and sinking through his skin. Tian had the oddest feeling that the ghost was a bit stuck, trying to work its way in. Like it was trying to push its way through mud, when it was expecting air. More alarming was that it wasn’t instantly torn apart as he started cycling the Hell Suppressing Body. It was being steadily eroded, struggling against the pull towards his lower dantian. The fact that it was capable of struggling at all was quite a statement all on its own, one confirmed by Threadcutter’s sudden outraged howls. Tian would have taken the time to enjoy them, were it not for the arrival of the hornets.
The insects looked like avatars of pain, a regrettable outburst of honesty from their heretic creator. They didn’t merely sting. They ripped. Their long mandibles reached down and jagged chitin forced its way through his dense skin. There was enough strength in the sin-forged monstrosities to rip away flesh by the square inch. Though, while the tearing and ripping were horribly painful, they were barely a distraction compared to the agony of the venom.
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The venom was an acid. It didn’t simply flow through the capillaries in search of the major veins, it melted its way into the interior. Holes in his arms and chest quickly widened and deepened, the tissue surrounding them already turning black and necrotic. Then the poison struck. The acid and necrosis were merely an introduction to the horror of the gu. The venom was a triumph of the worm-breeder’s art. It contained a full set of the infernal classics- Neurotoxin, hemotoxin, cyanotoxin, blended with things that should never have been in a hornet’s venom like mycotoxin and heavy metals. Even asphyxiants made it in the mix. Tian supposed that if you were going to stop the lungs and the heart from working, you might as well close the windpipe too.
All of that was within the scope of the, broadly defined, mundane. The fresh horror, the obscene innovation in the venom, was that it was not merely qi-dense poison, but it transformed what it touched into qi dense poison. The hornet-spider monstrosities carried not just a fatal venom, but a catalyst. A single injection could transform even a powerful cultivator into a screaming furnace, their lifetime cultivation fueling their destruction. Screaming, at least, until the neurotoxin and asphyxiants took hold. Then it would get quite silent and still.
The Hell Suppressing Body could destroy and refine poisons and curses eventually. Until it did, there was nothing to do but endure. And, if you were very petty, and truly hated the people near you, try to share your pain.
Tian couldn’t keep wielding his flail. The pain from the curse-ghost and the venom was making his vision go white and novel variations on agony played up and down his nerves. Shame to just throw it away, though. Tian yanked the leg straight and slapped his hand against the hyperextended knee. The damage to the bones was severe. The damage to the major meridian running up and down the leg was total.
The consuming pain was forcing him to sublimate all the accumulated ideas he had developed for his palm art. It all faded away, except for the most raw core. Slap the damn thing. Hit it hard, and let your qi burrow in, bypassing clothes and armor and refined flesh. Ignore everything, except the meridians and acupoints. Those should be utterly destroyed. The vibrating tendrils of qi accelerated beyond all previous levels, an inaudible howl of destruction as they burrowed deep within.
Tian had just enough focus to give the golden-eyed merchant three slaps. One to the knee, the next to the stomach, and when he felt that one shatter a warding spell, he threw a third a bit lower. The merchant’s life-saving measures had all been used up. There was nothing to stop Tian from obliterating his lower dantian. The merchant screamed again, pawing at his ring, but Tian couldn’t pay him any more attention. The hornets kept stinging him, and the venom was getting overwhelming.
He had been trying to preserve his means, but he simply didn’t have a better option. The hornets were too fast for him to slap, and the pain stopped anything clever from taking shape. He waved his right hand again, as though he were trying to drive them away. Then he sharply flicked the fingers forward. The gu shifted to Tian’s left so fast, they seemed to teleport. Trying to catch a heretic with a hidden weapon? Not so simple.
Three invisible needles slammed into the gu from beneath and behind. Not so simple, but easier if you manipulate the gu over to where the needles were already. Then it was just a matter of distracting them.
“Bastard! How dare you!” The gu master hidden in the insect swarm cursed Tian, and started sending out jets of acid. Tian had just enough sense left to drunkenly weave around, avoiding as much of the spray as possible. The bits of the Mermaid silk robes that didn’t have holes in it continued to hold up quite well against the acid. He focused on avoiding getting any acid on his head. It was enough, so long as he was able to break down what was already in his body.
The next few minutes were a hellish blur. The pain kept trying to steal his wits, the gu master and flame controlling sorcerer bombarded him with spells, and a man suffering from some sort of rotting disease kept throwing knives at him. Knives that chased him and always aimed for fatal points. It was hard not to resent someone who kept trying to stab you in the eyes and balls at the same time. Tian wasn’t inclined to try.
The only piece of good news was that the Hell Suppressing Body took almost no concentration on his part, and the refining of the curse-ghost was clearly hurting Threadcutter. You would think he was the one being refined, with the way he was screaming and thrashing around. The poison was similarly a painful blessing. Because it kept catalysing his own qi, it was slow and difficult to clear out. Nor was it an efficient exchange, his corrupted qi took no more or less vital energy to refine than the poison itself. However, the effect on his body refining was considerable. It was less what the poison could do for him, and more that it was activating something already in his body.
He would be very curious to find out what refining so much of the wolf spirit did for him. It seemed he was going to find out sooner rather than later. More interesting at the moment was the curse-ghost. The little horror was being refined right alongside the poison, and Tian could feel that there was something inside of it. A dense nugget of energy, and from that core, a thread, leading back to Threadcutter. Which did make Tian wonder, just why did such a powerful heretic have such a seemingly innocent name?