Chapter [B4] 21 — Gratitude

Chapter [B4] 21 — Gratitude

Battle raged amongst the fourth peak with a renewed vigor. Men cheered and roared as they poured over the demon armies, cultivators swept across, mystic arts exploding with power while mortal men and women rose to the occasions, firing with their rifles and using the new supply of healing pills to take care of the injured in the camps.

Lord Zhou watched all of this happening from the skies. In his long life, he’d had to face against demons many times, and there had even been time when there had been battles and armies against other lords. He’d seen many conflicts, many wars, they were never good things. To the men and women who fought in these wars, they were simply being told to risk their lives for the battle between lords that likely did not even know their names, and would not care for a moment should they perish.

That was the weight that war carried. The death of innocent men and women, the death of people who had no stakes in the war being fought, a terrible thing.

And yet... right now he saw something else entirely. He saw rallying cries from the soldiers, he saw them carrying each other, fighting side by side, and he saw the fury. The fury of their homes being invaded, the fury of these creatures trampling on all they loved, the fury to come for their way of life.

In just a few days, the fourth peak had come alive. From the edge of defeat they had been given a chance and he saw the despair give way to something else, something far more powerful that made his own heart pulse with vigor and strength.

They’d been given a miracle. And the winds of the battle had decidedly began to turn.

It made him itch to kill some demons with his own hands. To unleash that fury building inside of him, to let it find a target and burn them to ashes, smother their very souls and leave no trace of them behind.

He was far too controlled to let such rage control him, but it was there, burning in the background. It had been far too long since he’d let himself lose, far too long that he’d been Lord, but before being a Lord, he had been a warrior, and that warrior wanted to be let lose.

But now was not his time, and this was not his domain, and so he simply watched the battle continue.

His eyes drifted across the battlefields, and he saw the Fourth Lord leading the charge against the demons. He had not seen the Lord battle in decades. Of the seven Lords, Zeng was one of the oldest, and the most peaceful. He behaved much like an friendly uncle to almost everybody, to the point that other Lords called him unfitting for his position.

But they did not know the man like he did. They did not the warrior that resided within the man, underneath all that kindness, at the core of it was an iron will and the sure belief in his own power.

And now the demons witnessed that man. Witnessed the Zeng Shanyuan that few others had ever seen, and they found themselves crumbling.

Lord Zhou smiled, descending back from the skies as he headed to one of the war camps further back. At his waist was one of the jade slips that Lu Jie had gotten made for him. A convenient thing that let him communicate with them easily without having to setup a scrying formation art, and he kept reading their reports.

It was not just the fourth peak, the other lords were starting to receive the aid from the seventh peak. The pills and weapons had begun reaching, alongside the jade slips and the fire arrows and more, and the tides had began shifting in this conflict.

But a part of him also was afraid.

Things were going good... almost too good, and their enemy was not the mindless thing they had once been. They were clever, and they had to be prepared for a counter attack.

As he returned to camp, Mei Mei bowed to him.

“Lord Zhou,” she said, and he gave her a nod as she rose her head and turned towards the map. “We’ve managed to push back the demons for the first time, their lines have collapsed and split in two groups. As per the information via the jade slips, we’ve began digging trenches and laying explosives in the grounds and deploying archers to monitor the skies at all times to make re-capturing the land that much more difficult,” Zeng Yanmei said, almost breathless. The young woman had not stopped working for a second since he’d arrived, though given what he sensed of her cultivation, that would not be much of a bother for her, but her enthusiasm was infectious.

“These tactics took me some time to understand, but they make perfect sense given these weapons, and these devices—“ the girl pulled out her jade slip, which was still glowing, the words on it changed. “These things are changing the way war looks entirely. All of this is. These tactics are genius. We had not known how the demons were sustaining themselves, they did not seem to eat or drink or sleep or have any needs like a human army, they had been this relentless thing but it turns out that they’ve simply been moving underground and have been burning and destroying a lot less of the food than we’d originally anticipated,” Yanmei said, her voice quivering.

“They had wanted us to think them immortal, inhuman, creatures of ruthless savagery and strength. That they were this unstoppable force that could not be stopped. But no, they eat, they sleep, they rest, and they die. We’ve been using all the explosives you’ve supplied to collapse all their underground tunnels, storages and the demons are starting to panic. In a fell swoop they went from this undebatable enemy to... just creatures. And all of this...” she clutched her hand, looking down at the jade slip in her hand. “All of this was done by one guy? This is a strange question my lord but... is he truly real?” she said and then paused as if realizing what she’d just said and felt embarrassed and gave him a bow. “Apologies, that was a foolish thing to say.”

The lord heard Yanmei and couldn’t help but laugh. “Sometimes we wondered that too.”

“You did? Forgive me for saying this but the more I see the more I do not understand. I know of the auction, I’ve seen Lu Jie himself too. And he looked... unremarkable. He seemed rather shy and withdrawn, and mostly stayed out of sight. The show of all the things he had brought out in the auction had been a good spectacle, but ultimately it had been just that, a spectacle, a show for the people. And yet, uncle told me that the five families had entered a secret deal with him and that the boy would likely be the next great name in the empire.

I had struggled to believe him then but it was clearly true. Though this war began... if we survive it and come out the other end... he is going to be the name that would go down as the one that led us to victory. And my heart beats with joy. I see it right here, all that he’s doing, all that he’s bringing to us and all that he’s doing for us but I cannot make myself believe that it could be true, that he could be anything but a great spirit playing tricks. Even for that, this seems... almost too much,” Yanmei said.

But alas, he was here now, at least things would wrap up quickly now.

He took a moment to assess the situation, watching the battle taking place. The cultivators were just as expected, they alone would not be able to take down his armies.

Instead, it was the weapons from the seventh peak. They’d found their underground tunnels and were blowing them apart, collapsing places. Most of the deathless had been killed and the ones that remained seemed to be hiding. Cowards. He’d make sure they all died at his hands later on.

He observed the weapons. Strange things, they blasted little pellets. But when he saw what they were made of... a smile came upon his face.

Metal. That just happened to be his specialty.

But just destroying all their weapons won’t do. The cultivators would still be able to fight back. No, he needed to crush this momentum of their for good, once and for all. He needed to cut it off at the roots and then burn what remained and the dying flames for good measure.

He scanned the fourth peak till he found it. The man leading the charge. Fourth advancement. Or tenth realm as the cultivators called it. So likely the lord of this peak.

That would do.

Jinhai smiled, yellowed teeth showing through cracked lips as a manic energy ran across the demon’s body. He reached into his core, letting power surge forth as he stepped once more, arriving in sight and shooting range of the archers they’d stationed.

Before they could notice, he called upon his domain.

“Corrupted Domain: All is Dust.”

The domain expanded in an instant all around the fourth peak before the cultivators could react, a wave of panic spread around the soldiers but he did not give them any time as he let a torrent of miasma pour forth.

Corruption rose from the entire domain, his power surging. The metal they held began to corrode visibly, rust grew and brittleness rose as their weapons all began to crumble into red dust.

Their explosives crumbled to dust, some exploding amidst their own ranks, killing dozens in an instant.

But it wasn’t just the weapons. Those directly in the domain found their bodies coming next, their skin cracked, their hairs dried out, life faded as the men collapsed one after another, withering in matters of minutes.

Hundreds died in seconds. Others who did not wished they were dead.

As that happened, he felt the fourth lord head towards him in a rush, his own domain starting to expand as it pushed back on his, he simply grinned.

He’d wanted to use this on the Huo Patriarch, but he supposed this man would do as well. It was the trick he’d learned from how the boy killed the deathless. Yang Shen had forbidden him from doing it, because it could kill him and all that nonsense but he did not care.

He took out the alchemy pills he’d stolen, one of the exploding ones and then he let it explode, timing it just perfect as he mixed his own miasma with the explosion. The two energies mixed, and Jinhai felt the skin on his arm burn away from the knock back but the method worked, as a beam of energy shot forward.

And it shot through the lord’s shoulder and chest, evaporating entire sections. He clicked his tongue, he’d been aiming for his heart but the lord had sensed it at the last moment and saved himself. He took out another pill, letting it explode but this one blew up around his arm as he missed the timing, taking out half his arm. It would take nearly a whole minute for his arm to return. It always took so much time if the damage was by this method.

He needed to do some more practice with the technique and get the timing of it right.

Fortunately, he still had a lot of practice targets to play with.