Bey Peizhi didn’t glance at Lai Dongi after that last statent of murderous intent, but mostly because it seed wildly stupid to turn his attention from the two spirit beasts in front of them. The one to the left had clearly evolved from so kind of tiger. He was massive with thick slabs of muscle that still had a thin covering of fur that bore the distinctive stripes of his earlier form. Yellow eyes with that odd, vertically slitted pupil glared balefully at them. The one to the right looked almost entirely human, save for a few telltale scales around her eyes. As to what kind of lizard she might have started out as, though, he had no idea.
Nor were his thoughts particularly preoccupied with the origins of the spirit beasts. He was still trying to understand Lai Dongi’s instant provocation. Clearly, they would fight, but he would have preferred to take a little longer to assess their strength. It was always a challenge with spirit beasts since they didn’t adhere to clear stages the way human cultivators did. The main obstacle to understanding her choice was that he didn’t really know the Golden Phoenix Sect Matriarch.
He’d heard of her, of course. Every late-stage cultivator in the city knew each other if only by na. They’d even t occasionally, but he could count on one hand the number of tis they’d exchanged more than passing, cautious greetings before this catastrophe had descended on the city like a waking nightmare that refused to end. While the sects in the capital might be more restrained than sects elsewhere, they were still part of the Jianghu. That made any encounter with soone from another sect a fraught experience. Particularly when those etings were with a cultivator from a dramatically more powerful sect.
He also hadn’t made the sa mistake of dismissing the woman because of her beauty. If anything, that had made him more cautious of her because that kind of beauty could crack a man’s sanity like an eggshell. He had been less certain about her power. His own cultivation was connected with the moon, and, in so obscure way, that connection with a celestial object had enhanced his intuition. He didn’t know why. No one had ever been able to explain it to him. It was just on those things that was. Not that the ability was a supre trick. It wasn’t anything on par with diviners. He wasn’t beset by constant visions the way that so diviners were, but he often got accurate insights about others. That intuition had warned him that she was dangerous, but that was a questionably useful ssage since every cultivator was dangerous.
It was also nothing compared with what had happened when he finally found himself in a room with Lu Sen. At first, his intuition had been absolutely silent about the man. It was only when Judgnt’s Gale had casually threatened him with that ball of condensed oblivion that his intuition had finally decided to weigh in. Unlike Lai Dongi or most other cultivators, his insight into Lu Sen was significantly sharper and more detailed. Perhaps it was because Lu Sen was more firmly connected with the heavens or with fate than most other people. He actually had gotten a brief vision then.
It had been Lu Sen towering like a vengeful god over the entire world. He stared down on them all with the kind of distant, pitiless gaze that only the most ancient of cultivators ever mastered. Oceans of blood flowed from each of his hands to cover the land. Those oceans rose and rose until they drowned out every speck of opposition. Bey Peizhi knew better than to take sothing like that at face value. There might be so literal truth mixed in since world domination did seem to be the course that Fate’s Razor and The Living Spear were charting for Judgnt’s Gale. On the whole, though, he took it as more of an indication that Lu Sen had been steeped in blood and was versed in death.
Again, not sothing that shocking since Bey Peizhi had spilled plenty of blood in his ti. Except, there was the matter of the man’s age. The most reliable estimations put Lu Sen in his thirties at the oldest. Most cultivators that age had killed on occasion, but only under very controlled circumstances and with seniors on hand to keep things from spiraling out of control. For his intuition to react that way ant that Judgnt’s Gale must have been responsible for a truly appalling number of deaths in his very recent past. A notion supported both by the man’s ghastly killing intent and that oblivion technique of his. Bey Peizhi still didn’t understand how anyone could hope to control such a technique, let alone with the precision that Lu Sen seed to handle it.
Not that Lu Sen was the only one who had shocked him with their ability to casually wield destructive techniques. Like many, Bey Peizhi had relegated water cultivators to a ntal list of lesser threats. He supposed that might even be accurate in the lower stages where both power and control were lacking. Watching Lai Dongi punch holes through hundreds of spirit beasts with nothing but water droplets had given his intuition’s warning about her a very real context. Seeing that had made him very happy that he hadn’t followed through on his earlier implication about her relationship with Lu Sen. It had been a foolish comnt, driven more by frustration than any real malice.
He honestly had no idea what the relationship between the two actually was, even if it did make so kind of strange sense. Both were anomalies among the already anomalous cultivators. One was isolated because of her appearance. The other was isolated by his impossibly fast growth in power and his terrifying teachers. Oh, they both had power structures around them, but he knew better than most that a power structure was a poor substitute for close relationships. None of which explained why Lai Dongi had jumped straight to provoking the spirit beasts in front of them. Maybe she’s been just as frustrated as I am by holding back, he thought.
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The tiger-man took an aggressive step forward, and Bey Peizhi felt an alarming swell of qi from the creature. That thing is not weak, he thought. Before the mont could descend into imdiate violence, the lizard-woman put a restraining hand on the arm of the other spirit beast. Bey Peizhi was surprised when the tiger-man stepped back and let his qi recede. The lizard-woman gave Lai Dongi a cruel smile.
“How brave you are when the battle is already lost,” said the lizard-woman. “Perhaps, if you could summon forth the wrath of the heavens again, you might be able to stop us. But I think that if you could have, you would have done so already. Did so pitiful human cultivator sacrifice themselves to make that technique possible? You should accept the inevitable now. I’ll grant you a swift death.”
Bey Peizhi braced himself for Lai Dongi to do sothing rash, but she remained outwardly calm, relaxed, almost blithely indifferent to the spirit beast’s words.
“Lost, you say?” asked Lai Dongi. “Perhaps if your formation were still able to function. But it isn’t, is it? I dare say that it will probably never work. After all, if you could make it work, I suspect you would have used it already. So, instead of overrunning us, you break yourselves on our walls. As for the wrath of the heavens, how many of your wretched kind died in that one stroke? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? I expect that they died screaming and in terror as that technique consud them body and spirit. A fate that awaits you all. Tell . Did you lose anyone that you cared about? A friend? A child? A lover? A clan?”
The lizard-woman apparently lacked Lai Dongi’s self-control because her face contorted in rage. Nor could Bey Peizhi bla the creature. Lai Dongi was clearly far better practiced at the art of trading barbs. Then, to very intentionally add insult to injury, she offered the spirit beast a beatific smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Lai Dongi in a tone dripping with false sincerity. “That wasn’t very kind of .”
“You impudent human bitch!” shrieked the lizard-woman as qi poured out of her. “I will eat your heart!”
Bey Peizhi had watched this exchange with a kind of grim fascination. It was only when he realized that the tiger-man was also transfixed by the exchange that he realized the opportunity before him. One of the key advantages that nascent soul cultivators had over their core formation counterparts, other than the obvious leap in strength, was speed. Core cultivators still had to draw out their qi and shape it into techniques. The especially talented ones, like Lu Sen, could do it so fast that they might easily be mistaken for nascent soul cultivators, but there was a difference. The separation between a nascent soul cultivator and their qi was all but nonexistent. That made their techniques all but instantaneous. He used that fact to his advantage. Just as the lizard-woman stopped speaking. Bey Peizhi burst into the conversation for the first ti.
“Lunar lance!” he cried.
A spear of light that seed to cast the world into a ghostly netherspace for a few monts shot from his hand and surged toward the tiger-man. In other tis, Bey Peizhi wouldn’t have resorted to such a sneak attack, but this was war. There were no niceties to be observed. There was only life and death. And he planned to live! For all the speed of the attack and the tiger-man’s distraction, the spirit beast had not achieved his current form by accident. He managed to twist aside at the last instant. Instead of punching a hole through the creature, it tore open an ugly gouge in his side that sprayed the lizard woman with blood.
The lizard woman staggered to one side, montarily blinded by the blood that had struck her face. A noise that hovered sowhere between a shout and roar exploded from the tiger-man’s mouth. It was Bey Peizhi’s turn to almost be too late. It wasn’t just a reaction to the pain. It was a technique laden with qi.
“Celestial bulwark!” shouted Bey Peizhi as he tried to cover both himself and Lai Dongi.
The half-ford technique appeared as a misty haze but never coalesced into the bone-white wall he wanted. He felt the technique shedding so of the force from the roar, but the sound attack finally dispersed the haze. The world spun wildly in his vision as a sense of vertigo was forced onto him from the outside. It occurred to him that taking that technique directly would likely have rendered him unconscious and easy prey. Not that he was much better in his current condition. Sothing seized the back of his robe and dragged him to one side. He very nearly struck out blindly before he felt as much as heard sothing land where he’d just been. There was a sizzling noise and an acrid sll in the air.
His own qi finally pushed out the foreign qi, and his vision cleared. The tiger-man was hunched to one side as blood continued to pour out of his wound, but the lizard-woman had stepped forward, eyes alight with insane fury. Bey Peizhi glanced to where he’d been standing and saw a bubbling mass eating away at the ground. It had to be so kind of acid or poison, which ant the lizard woman had likely evolved from so kind of snake. That wasn’t great news for Bey Peizhi. His defensive techniques weren’t especially strong against that kind of corrosive qi.
He was trying to decide on his next move when there was a shockingly potent surge of qi from a few miles away. The kind of surge that only a nascent soul cultivator or their spirit beast counterparts could achieve. Still, it had the quality of a human cultivator technique to it. If there was another nascent soul cultivator on the field, that had to an it wasn’t just these two high-level spirit beasts launching assaults. If there were multiple assaults going on right now, were there any left to defend the interior of the city? He glanced back at the walls before he heard the lizard-woman laughing.
“Figured it out, did you?” she asked, that cruel smile once more on her face. “We don’t need to kill you now. We just need to hold you here. Then, we’ll hunt you at our leisure.”
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