Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 58Book 10: : A Chance to Act (1)
“I don’t suppose the honorable Lord Lu will be joining us today, will he?” asked Bey Peizhi.
Lai Dongmei had to suppress a sigh and avoid looking at the man from the Lunar Tiger Sect. A task made far easier by the battle raging below. Still, questions like that had come more and more frequently as Sen’s absence had dragged out from one day to three days. An angry part of her wanted to ask everyone who put that question to her if they felt Sen hadn’t done his part, and then challenge them to create an equally audacious technique to hurl at the spirit beasts. The rest of her understood why they kept asking. They’d managed to keep the spirit beasts out of the city, mostly, but the cracks were showing in this hasty alliance. Something that was only made worse by the relentless fighting.
The spirit beasts came day and night, which meant that rest was hard to come by. As the people on the walls grew more tired, tempers grew short. Cultivators from different sects were blaming each other for things that weren’t even mistakes but merely the misfortunes of war. The mortals were growing increasingly despondent as they realized this siege of the city wasn’t going to be over quickly. The flickering flame of trust between the cultivators and mortals threatened to wink out at any moment.
The seemingly endless number of spirit beasts only reinforced the idea that the siege would never end until everyone was dead. She knew it wasn’t so. The more powerful, self-aware spirit beasts had finally started showing themselves. The only reason for them to do that was because they were running shorter on sacrificial spirit beasts than the numbers on the battlefield might suggest. Of course, things weren’t much better inside the city. There had always been a finite number of mortals and cultivators to man the walls. The spirit beasts could lose appalling numbers—and already had—yet still emerge victorious from this fight. Every mortal and cultivator who fell inside the city was an irreplaceable resource.
The problem was ultimately morale. After that terrifying display of raw power and unparalleled destruction, Sen had become a symbol to just about everyone as word spread that Lord Lu had struck out against the spirit beasts. A status was only solidified when the spirit beasts began their assault in earnest. But symbols needed to be seen to be effective, and no one had seen him since this fight started. There were already rumors circulating that he’d secretly abandoned them all. She almost wished he had. The truth was so much worse.
She’d been back to visit him a few times since she first took him to Lu Manor. There was no change or, if there had been a change, it was for the worse. She had been holding off on taking a healer there, both for his safety and out of the hope that he would come out of it on his own. As things stood, the time for those concerns had run out. Everyone in this city needed to see him or the whole fragile construct might well implode under the weight of people’s growing despair. Of course, all of that assumed that he even could be helped. Something that she was not at all certain was possible. She finally turned to look at Bey Peizhi.
“You’re free to enter Lu Manor and inquire for yourself,” she said in a sickly-sweet tone.
The other cultivator grimaced at those words. He had tried to do exactly that the day before and been brutally rebuffed by the manor’s dreadful defenses. Those defenses had always been overly hostile in her opinion, but had somehow seemed to grow angry and vengeful following the return of Sen in his wounded state. Ready to lash out at the slightest hint of a provocation. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought they were alive. Given all of that, she wouldn’t have tried to force her way in. Of course, she also knew what was waiting inside. She had kept the truth to herself because it would serve no good end to spread that news around. Cultivators might be less deeply connected to their emotions than the mortals in some respects, but they weren’t immune to hopelessness.
“You know damned well that I already tried and failed. Why do you get special treatment?” he demanded. “Or is it just the obvious?”
“The obvious?” she asked in a deceptively light tone.
She was all but daring him to give true voice to his insinuation. She’d have to murder him on the spot if he proved himself legitimately that stupid, which would be a waste. Far better if he died fighting one of the upper echelon of the spirit beasts. Still, it would give her an excuse to vent some of her own mounting frustrations on something. The nascent soul cultivators only fought the most powerful spirit beasts. That had been the plan from the start. One that she noticed would not have included Lu Sen himself. He was technically still a core cultivator, at least in his spirit cultivation. It was a stunning bit of hypocrisy given what he’d done mere days ago. The plan was logical, reasonable, but that didn’t make it easy to watch the people fighting and dying below without acting.
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Sen had been sure, and the sects had all agreed with him, that the spirit beasts wanted the most powerful cultivators to exhaust themselves on the endless waves. Then, when the cultivator elite were at their weakest, the spirit beast elite would make their move. So, the nascent soul cultivators waited and watched as mortals fell by the score and junior sect members risked everything to keep the waves at bay for another minute, another hour, another day. Lai Dongmei’s eyes drifted to the ever-growing mounds of the dead. They were laid out with as much respect as could be offered, which was very little since the fighting never really let up. Cultivators were placed next to mortals, made peers by the tireless, ever-grasping hand of death.
There were entire buildings near the walls where the wounded were treated and allowed a few extra hours of rest before they were hurled back into the teeth of this disaster. Sect healers roamed the rooms of those buildings with salves and minor healing pills. Those who were too injured to keep fighting were sent back to the inner area of the city, where the nine-tail foxes maintained their illusions to protect those who couldn’t fight. She had thought that ploy a hideously dangerous gamble on Sen’s part, but the foxes had proven themselves worthy of that trust. Or, their leader had at any rate. Lai Dongmei had very specific and unkind thoughts about that woman, but she knew better than to let her annoyance jeopardize the current situation. Besides, the fox woman had kept her word.
A few spirit beasts had managed to get into the city from underneath. A possibility that Sen had brought up, but everyone had said it was so unlikely that it wasn’t worth devoting their limited forces to guard against. The foxes had stood fast even when those prowling, murderous invaders had gotten within mere feet of their illusions. Lai Dongmei wasn’t sure if that had been bravery or pure overconfidence in their illusions, but it had bought the extra seconds the nascent soul cultivators needed to swoop in and destroy the beasts. The tunnels the spirit beasts had used were promptly filled with fires hot enough to melt steel and then collapsed.
When the silence dragged on for several seconds longer than she expected, Lai Dongmei finally glanced at Bey Peizhi. He looked like he’d eaten something particularly sour and unappetizing. Maybe she’d accidentally let some of her killing intent leak out.
“I may have spoken out of misplaced anger,” said Bey Peizhi. “I apologize.”
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That was disappointing, thought Lai Dongmei, but I suppose it was for the best. Fighting each other when there were still so many enemies outside the walls would just be doing the spirit beasts’ work for them. I suppose I can always challenge him later if we both survive this, she thought. The idea improved her mood even if she knew that she’d never act on it. They were all under strain. Unless he gave her some much more serious reason to hold a grudge, she was inclined to forget any minor comments uttered under these conditions. Bey Peizhi started to speak, but snapped his mouth closed as both of their heads turned to focus on the exact same spot. At least two very powerful spirit beasts had gotten far too close to the city walls. Closer than they should have gotten without some kind of powerful stealth techniques.
“Finally,” said Bey Peizhi.
The relief that he would get to act after all of the waiting rolled off the man. Lai Dongmei wanted to chide him for not controlling himself a little better, but she felt that same relief inside herself. She didn’t know how serious the fight would be or how long it would last, but at least it would be better than watching the eternal struggle between life and death play out below her. With near-simultaneous bursts of qi, the two cultivators shot out over the wall to confront the superior spirit beasts. As she passed the wall, Lai Dongmei accidentally unleashed a barrage of tiny water pellets and sent them crashing down on the spirit beasts that were scaling the wall. The pellets went straight through several hundred spirit beasts and sent a rain of blood down onto the ones who managed to survive the assault.
A monstrous blade of pale light that reminded Lai Dongmei of a scythe swept along the same stretch of wall a mere moment later, cleaving the rest of the surviving spirit beasts into pieces. She shot a knowing look at Bey Peizhi.
“Oh no,” he said in a flat voice. “I missed with my technique. How clumsy of me.”
A round of cheers from the mortals and cultivators on the wall drifted in their wake. It would be a short break for those beleaguered fighters, but even a few minutes of rest could mean the difference between survival and joining the mounds of the dead. Techniques rose up from the horde below in a meaningless attempt to impede them. Lai Dongmei didn’t need to do anything about most of them, since they’d been sent into the air too late. The ones that were on target were brushed aside, since they were on about the same level as a technique from a foundation formation cultivator. The truth was that she could probably have let them hit her and suffered no ill effects, but one did not survive as long as she did by taking unnecessary chances.
She swiftly found the spirit beasts that they were looking for and descended to the ground. Bey Peizhi landed next to her.
“Well,” said Lai Dongmei. “I would give you jumped-up monstrosities the chance to run away, but I just don’t want to.”
