Jade Dragon Beauty

That night Shen put the water making device on hold and spent her time making things to help in the coming battle. The first thing was to learn how to make Life chi. As Life was the only thing guaranteed to permanently destroy them, the General gathered them all together and taught them how to focus on the Life inside of them and the group spent the next several hours studying it. As the sun set Shen pulled out a bit of Neutral chi from a spirit stone, though not enough to make it collapse, and produced a tiny spark of Life. It was comparable to what Mae made this morning, at around three percent, though thanks to the three additional hours of training Mae could now produce it at around 7%, her knowledge of Wood and Yin chi helping to make it purer than normal.

Still, that tiny amount of chi was enough to make Life relics. She took out the three demon cores and painted the Explosion formation on them, and was about to imbue the symbol with her own chi when she realized that someone else could do that step if they knew how, much like she had done to the Family's formation at the field. Nether the General nor Mae knew how to imbue a formation, and Ponma, Danka, and Shoom had lower purity that her, but Lu's Life chi was at 4% and he knew how to do the job. Once they were finished she had three devices which would instantly and permanently take out the Dead within five heights or so of where it was activated.

The rest of the night she spent making special hollow stones. While one would expect her to be making attack talismans or other items, Lu was surprisingly competent with low level talismans, though he never studied any complex ones. He could make the talismans and she would imbue them with her Fire once they were dry, letting her work on a different project.

The issue was chi. Each talisman took around fifty points of it to work properly when activated, about as much as a spirit stone, and she only had around 6000 points of Fire chi. That meant that she could use around 120 of them before depleting herself. She planned on using thousands, though. She had the paper for around two thousand, and could buy more once she got to a town with a proper shop. Each of the stones would contain several spirit stones and a Foundation level Death beast core from one of the Dead they killed days ago. The first part of the formation would destroy one spirit stone and channel the energy into the beast core if it was too low on chi. The second would neutralize any chi sent through it. She wanted to make it imbue the chi with Fire, but, as Fire fed Earth, this resulted in the stone absorbing some of the chi, and she would need as much as possible for what she was going to do.

The next morning they got up just before sunrise, ate a quick meal, and set off for the fort. Whoever was in the fort must have seen them coming because as soon as they were over the horizon several hundred ghosts flew at them. While the stories always combined the two skills, animating the dead and controlling ghosts were two separate fields of study. While it wasn't necessary to be at Nascent Soul to control ghosts, as demonstrated by the twins, it helped tremendously. That meant that the Necromancer was most likely a Nascent Soul level cultivator.

For mortals and low rank cultivators ghosts were very dangerous opponents due to their ability to pass through solid barriers and ignore physical attacks. This meant that the only thing mortals had access to that could harm them was fire, and mundane fire was essentially an irritation and temporary inconvenience to any but the weakest ghosts. For cultivators, however, they were only an enemy which required some care when dealing with, like a mortal fighting someone who was covered in armor. Cultivators could simply use chi based attacks to fight them, and only needed to worry about the amount of chi used, as higher level ghosts required more chi to significantly damage them.

They flew at the other group, Shen throwing her chakram and fire bolts instead of the talismans. She wanted to keep them and the Life grenades a secret until they assaulted the main fort. The fighters made short work of the incoming souls, including Shoom who had learned a technique for shooting Ice Bolts and merely needed practice, which these ghosts worked as targets for. Mae and Ponma, however, hid behind a Water barrier Ponma created, with Mae occasionally sending out a chi bolt if one tried to break through the barrier. Many would think that she could easily defeat them through the use of Life chi, but ghosts weren't any weaker to it that Fire or Earth chi. While in the corporeal undead there was large amounts of Death chi, as one needed to use Death chi to animate them with a false life technique, That wasn't true with ghosts. Ghosts required chi to continue interacting with the physical world, but they didn't require a specific type. Like cultivators they could absorb and use any type, the type just altering the abilities they could use.

After a few minutes the fighters had finished off the rest of the ghosts and only the two that were harassing Ponma and Mae were left. They had managed to destroy one so far and Mae and Ponma were occasionally throwing attacks, though Yin wasn't good at doing damage, so Mae's attacks were mostly annoying it.

Shen drew her dragon sword and flew at the uninjured one, charging the Deep Freeze ability before swinging. It flew into two pieces and dissipated. Ponma hit the other one with a water bolt and it seemed to get tired before dissolving away. "You two okay?" Shen asked, and they both nodded. Now that she knew her friends were okay, Shen rejoined the other group and flew for the castle.

Just as they got into range some of the Dead started throwing Necrotic Bolts, Death based attacks that caused the body to rot anywhere that they hit. Shen put up a Fire barrier to block them, then brought a stack of twenty Fire talismans out of her ring and charged them. The General threw a large attack of his own where he sensed a powerful ghost, and Shen took it as a sign to launch her attack. She simultaneously charged all twenty talismans and sent them to twenty different random locations in the fort before pulling out another twenty and repeating the process. She hadn't used many talismans, but she continued the cycle almost 100 times until she had run out of talismans.

While she was doing so, a ghost flew out of the castle and attacked the General, and he had left to fight it. The boys waited on Shen to finish, as she was making it impossible to attack the enemy with anything but long ranged attacks. Once the bombardment was over and there were only around three hundred of the original more than ten thousand dead left, Shen flew at the fort and the other fighters joined her. There was a loud ghostly scream and Shen paused for a second to see the General with his arm through the chest of the ghost as it dissolved. The General drew in chi from the ghost's dissipating remains, almost refilling his own reserves, then nodded at Shen as he flew towards the fort.

The two of them arrived a few seconds after the others, and landed in front of a group of Dead that were approaching them from the rear. Shen saw them grouping up as they approached and pulled a Life grenade from her ring before throwing it into the middle of the group. There was a bright flash of pure white light and around twenty Dead just stopped and collapsed onto the ground, all of the Death chi within them being neutralized and no longer able to animate them. Between the ten thousand corpses occasionally some would start to move again, so between dicing up or igniting those that weren't seriously injured by the initial attack, Shen finished off Dead that were barely intact.

A few minutes later and nothing besides their group was moving. While Shen had managed to avoid taking any attack that might break the skin, the boys hadn't been so lucky, and Mae and Ponma had to come in to help treat those that were injured and clean up the battlefield. While Mae's primary job was to be the healer and alchemist for the group, Ponma was supposed to gather anything of value and burn the corpses, like the other nights. The rest of them would lend a hand if they had the energy, but after a battle they usually meditated to recharge their chi to at least half before helping to move the bodies.

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"Make sure to cycle some Life chi through yourself, in case the Dead left any Death in the wounds." Shen added, looking around. Her reserves were just over half full, due to having conserved her chi through the use of a sword with its own chi source, so, while the sword was desperate to be recharged, she was able to help move bodies and body parts. Only the cores and bones would be worth anything, so once Ponma had removed the cores Shen could pile them up and start a fire. Once they had been burnt she could collect most of the bones, a few of the smaller ones being ruined by the heat.

Once they had finished recharging, the others, not including the General, came over to help. They worked all day, Ponma, Shoom, and Shen's sword keeping them cool despite the desert heat. They were about eighty percent finished removing the cores, about two hours after sunset, when a voice boomed over the fort. "How Dare you attack my fort! I shall slaughter all of you and turn you into more puppets."

A half decayed body flew up to the General and started talking. "You." he barked, pointing at the General. "Are you in charge of this group of fighters? What makes you think you can just fly up here and attack me?"

The General looked at him sternly. "How many subjects of the Empire have you killed so far? Thousands? Tens of thousands? I would have let you go if you had just tamed the ones wandering the desert of killed bandits, but I saw your minions returning with freshly killed townsfolk."

The Dead man laughed. "Those?" he said mockingly, "those are just peasants. What does it matter if a few of them die? My army grows stronger with each one I raise, and soon I shall have enough troops to overrun what is left of the natives of this world, turning them into an undying, untiring, work force. I will become the strongest Lord within the entire Empire."

"Quite ambitious, I see." said the General. "And how do you plan on dealing with, say, Lord Severance Battle, to the West? From what I've heard of him, he's not going to just let you stage a massive army on his borders, even if Lord Fang Merchant is unable to stop you from raiding his villages."

"Merchant is a fool who has more land than he can protect. What does it matter if I, a lesser noble, take some of it for myself, if he is unable to defend it?" The General shrugged and nodded. "As for Battle," the dead man chuckled. "Once I have turned the people of Merchant's territory into my minions, which Lord's army stands a chance against me? I will send half a million troops at him, then slaughter and raise all that are killed, giving me a large enough army to challenge any group of nobles. Who knows, maybe some of the General's family will make good higher servants. I've always liked that wife of…" The dead man then paused, realizing that there were certain people he shouldn't say such things around. This man might not just be a mercenary that he can recruit. "What did you say your name was?"

The General smiled. "Severance Battle." he responded. "So tell me, Minor Lord Tendon Dark. What exactly were you planning on doing to my wife?"

The Dead man looked at the General in shock and horror. "I wasn't going to do anything. I was going to let you and your household leave as outcast nobles, of course." While the law of the Empire did allow nobles to conquer other nobles and take their territories and titles, it did not allow for Nobles to kill each other outside of duels and accidents on the battle field. This meant that most defeated nobles were allowed to leave after a military defeat and become outcasts in another noble's territory.

The General didn't seem to accept this and flew towards the man slowly. "Really? I thought you admired my wife and wanted to make her a high ranking minion. Tell me, what would one noble want to make another's a high ranking servant for?" He floated so close that the other man could feel his breath. "You weren't thinking of killing me and taking my wife as your concubine, were you?"

The nervous dead man gave a slight smile to try and calm the General, then turned and started fleeing. The General was faster, however, and soon got in front of him. The man tried to flee several more times, but the General kept cutting him off. "You conspired to kill me so that you could take my territory and wife, and you think I'll just let you leave?" said the General after a few more escape attempts that were all cut off.

The Dead man got a determined look on his face. If he was going to be killed here, he could at least put up a fight. He put a large amount of chi into a Necrotic Bolt and flew at the General, intending to hit him while holding it, but the General dodged and kicked the man's back as he passed, causing him to release the chi bolt. It flew towards the ground and hit, killing all of the small plants within five heights of the center.

The General beat the man a few times and kicked him into the ground, causing him to impact ten heights from Shen. He stood up looked at Shen. "Let's see how much he cares for his slaves, shall we?" said Dark before flying at Shen as quickly as he could.

Several possibilities of how to handle the situation ran through Shen's head at that moment, from running to dodging to counterattacking, but she quickly settled on the one counterattack that might injure him. She pulled the last of her Life grenades out of her ring, the rest being used to clear out the Dead from the castle, and threw it at him. When it impacted it released a massive burst of bright white light and he grabbed his face, screaming in pain.

"How dare a mere slave do that to me?" he screamed, then moved his hands to reveal than none of the Dead flesh was still attached, having come off in the explosion, and the bone looked almost healthy. "I am going to tear you limb from limb so badly that even I won't be able to reanimate you." He charged a quick Necrotic bolt in each hand and was about to fly at Shen when the General landed and grabbed his head, twisting so hard that it was almost pulled free from his body.

"That won't keep him down for long," said the General, releasing the head and letting the man collapse to the ground. "Take the others and leave."

"But what if you need our help?" Shen asked. For some reason she felt like she needed to protect him. Probably that damned Slave Contract.

"Against a Nascent Soul cultivator? You just used your best attack and it only slightly wounded him. And I'm guessing that's your last Life Grenade, yes?" Shen nodded. "Don't worry, I'll win this battle and rejoin you." Dark had stood up by this time and had twisted his neck mostly into the correct position, but was still making minor adjustments. The others had gathered around Shen by that point as well, intent on hearing what the master wanted. "If you can't find me after the battle, then go to my estate to the West. My wife will know how to read the contract and know what to do with you." Dark tensed his muscles and screamed in anger. "Now go!" The General flew at Dark, and they collided.

Shen and the others jumped onto their flying items and flew West a few li so that they were no longer in the way but could watch the battle. For several minutes the two threw attacks at each other, Dark seeming to take more damage than the General, then something happened. A cry of "Undead Rage" boomed out from Dark and he flew at the General. Suddenly it was the General who was taking the most hits and the most damage as he was continuously knocked back. He tried to use barriers and various chi attacks to push Dark back, but none of them seemed to do much.

Eventually, when the General was almost dead, Dark flew at him again and instead of trying to push the man away several tendrils of chi flew out of the General and grabbed the man, pulling him in. The General wrapped his arms and legs around the man and his skin briefly glowed before there was a massive explosion, blowing both of the men into a thousand pieces.

The team flew over to look for the General, but all they found were parts of flesh from something that was recently alive and his storage ring, which was surprisingly intact. Shen couldn't open the ring so she pocketed it. She searched parts of Dark's and the General's corpses for signs of a soul, but couldn't find anything. The General had likely detonated both his core and soul in order to kill Dark, so neither would still exist.

She thought that this would free her from the Slave Contract, but she could feel something within her pulling her to the West. She had no doubt that this was the General's wife's location, with him having put her into the contract as the inheritor in the event of his death. Shen wasn't free yet, but for now she was fairly close. She would just have to find a way for the wife to free them when they arrived at the estate.