Moon Cultivation [Sci-fi Xianxia]

I couldn't see the thinhorn's smile under his mask, but his eyes were laughing. The look of someone who had everything under control.

"Oh!" he said. "One female did escape, actually. The second team's playing with her right now."

Bao and Denis turned to look at me. Both were tense, but they hadn't fully grasped what was happening yet. Their interfaces were silent too. Total isolation.

"Demon?" Bao asked, slowly shifting into a fighting stance.

I raised my hand sharply.

"Don't. This body's just a shell. If we kill him, he'll just switch bodies." And somehow, I doubted there was a trap-body stashed nearby to trap him.

"Smart thinking," the demon nodded. "But are you sure you can kill me?"

I studied the eyes and the horns, the only parts not covered by the mask and workwear.

"Two-fourteen," I recalled. "That body's fairly young. I'm betting it's Second Stage as well, and with a much weaker foundation than ours. Even with all your experience, the odds are pretty even."

The demon nodded again.

"I like you a lot more than that little shit Vrhakzun. Never liked him. You know, I still have his body. His original one."

"And?" I didn't get it.

"I can share. I'll be needing an ambitious assistant. Fancy switching sides?"

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I said in disbelief.

"Not at all," the demon shook his head. "I'll even give Thyzreth's body to your girlfriend."

"You have a girlfriend?" Denis asked, at the worst possible moment.

I just spread my arms. As if to say — Seriously? Now?

The demon, however, answered for me.

"Nur Amira Rahman. Or, as she's now known, Zola Thembeka Dlamini. Either way, if you join me, I'll have to get rid of Thyzreth. She's rather upset with you."

There was an awkward pause.

"So?" he asked.

I said nothing. My head was a mess.

I scanned the surroundings. We were standing in the middle of the pasture, far from any buildings, only the surveillance drones hovered above us. I'd bet anything they were broadcasting fake visuals.

I activated Thousand Sparks of Awareness and Mind Parallelisation. Now the chaos in my head was happening twice as fast, across two separate streams.

I couldn't agree, and I couldn't refuse. Either option came with consequences. If I agreed, he'd clearly ask for proof of loyalty. Like killing the others…

"What about my friends?" I asked, buying time.

Somewhere deep down, much as it annoyed me, I was hoping Novak was once again using me in the dark, and that the Great One had foreseen a stunt like this. I just needed to hold out long enough for backup to arrive.

"You can't save everyone," the thinhorn waved it off. "You won't have to kill them. I'll do it myself."

Denis and Bao had already shifted openly into combat stances.

"Try it, bastard!" Denis barked.

"You're really asking for it," Bao shook his head and pulled out an old card. "Do you even know who my father is?"

The demon laughed.

"I know more about your family than you can imagine," he said. "I knew your great-grandfather and grandfather, as well as your father, uncles, and aunts. All proper little bastards, the lot of them.

"I knew young Vaclav too," the demon added, speaking to me now, though he didn't go into detail.

"Time's up," he said, unzipping his jacket and pulling an auto-injector from an inner pocket. He waved it in the air, then tossed it at me.

I stepped aside and let the syringe fall into the grass.

"You either inject that, or I kill you all," said the demon.

"Well," Denis shrugged, "you're going to kill us either way."

The demon didn't have time to respond, Denis burst forward. He used a dashing technique, a distant cousin to my Iron Head. They only really shared the shape — a forward lunge. The decisive blow came from his elbow, followed by a projection of his entire body surging ahead, formed from Palm Qi.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

At the moment of impact, the demon thrust his hand forward, and a vine shot from his sleeve, slamming into Denis's shoulder.

The demon leapt, using the vine as leverage and Denis as an anchor point.

Denis's projection passed underneath, while the demon, now inverted in the air, struck Denis's helmet with a second vine from his other sleeve. Denis staggered and collapsed to the ground, pinned by the first vine and the demon's weight.

The demon didn't drop to the ground. The vine pinning Denis down instantly took root, anchoring him in place. It swayed above him like an overloaded palm trunk heavy with fruit, slowly lowering the demon towards the ground.

Bao didn't wait for the enemy's feet to touch the grass. He tore the mace from his belt, spun it overhead, unfurling the twisted head into a whip, and lashed out at the demon.

The demon intercepted it with his free vine.

His vines were pale, lighter, faster than Bao's, and stronger.

The pale vine coiled around the not-fully-unfurled mace head and yanked it toward him. Bao's feet slid across the grass.

I finally made my decision, and abandoned Bao.

"Don't die!"

I jumped into the air and started running, generating counter-air currents beneath my feet. In Verdis's thin atmosphere, that was harder. This wasn't the Air Garden, with its constant winds, I had to give it everything I had, burning through twice the usual amount of qi just to make Mad Monkey of East work.

I needed to reach Novak. I had to break out of the interference zone where the enemy was jamming signals, but if I ran along the ground, I'd just demoralise my friends and give the demon more reason to finish them off quickly.

So I picked a different target.

Directly above us, a drone was hovering, and I had every reason to believe it was the source of the signal jamming.

I kept my contact list open and, the moment I reached striking distance, unleashed a barrage of Chain Punches at the drone.

The first projection tore through the plastic shell, and shards rained down like hail.

The greyed-out names on my contact list turned blue.

I was just about to select Novak, but a fraction of a second before I could, the list was overridden by an incoming call.

Incoming call: B. Bat-Erdene

Accept / Decline

I hit accept immediately.

"Perfect! If you hadn't, I would've had to blow my cover!" said my fellow disciple.

"What?" I asked.

Somehow, my mind split the tasks automatically. One part of my consciousness focused on the fight, the other on the conversation with Bat-Erdene. I'll just call him Bat, otherwise, I keep wanting to say Endere instead of Erdene.

I hadn't climbed this high just to waste movement. Destroying the drone was one goal. But I had another.

I glanced down and assessed the situation below.

The demon and Bao were locked in a tug-of-war, the vine caught between them. Denis managed to twist under the other vine and grabbed it with his hand, his arm glowing gold, clearly pumped full of qi.

My friends and the enemy were too far for me to reach them with a projection, so I kept jumping until I was directly above the demon.

"Buy time!" Bat ordered. "And try not to kill him."

"What?!" both streams of my consciousness flared in irritation. I did a half-somersault, leapt up and planted my feet into the air currents above me as if into a ceiling, using them to push myself into a dive.

"He's not the demon!" Bat explained. "Well, he is a demon, but the thinhorn isn't the main body. It's a puppet."

"Like my beetles?" I asked, plummeting downward while adjusting my trajectory with air streams.

"Exactly like your beetles," Bat confirmed in a rush. "We're tracking the signal to his real body. Just keep him busy."

Denis let out a strained yell and snapped the vine like a brittle dry branch.

Bao followed it with a roar of his own, slamming the heel of his armoured boot into the ground to stop his slide. He yanked the thinhorn toward him, just as my feet came crashing down onto the enemy's shoulders.

Bao's pull threw the puppet off-balance, and I smashed into the ground, creating a shockwave so hard my bollocks went numb. Earth and grass erupted in a fountain. The puppet was thrown off.

Bao immediately yanked him back in, rewinding his mace into a tight coil, wrapping it and the demon's vine altogether, while the struggling puppet temporarily lost control.

"Perfect!" Bat shouted into my ear. "The more effort he spends maintaining control, the faster we can triangulate his location. Just don't kill him too soon."

I was in no state to kill anyone. I hadn't landed on straight legs. I'd bent them just enough not to snap anything, but the impact was so strong I'd folded in half, slammed into the ground arse-first, and kneed myself in the chin. Now I was trying to get back on my feet.

Damn it! I really needed to learn an ultimate already. A falling fist from the sky wasn't such a bad option. Anything that would stop me from using myself as the projectile.

Denis and Bao were now taking a more active role in the fight.

Fuelled by golden Palm Qi, Denis shook off the last of the vine restraining him and charged the thinhorn.

The puppet regained its senses just in time, braced one vine against the ground and yanked the other to rip Bao off his feet. He spun Bao around like a flail and hurled him straight at Denis, but Denis slid under the living projectile like a footballer going in for a tackle and sprang back up instantly.

He didn't use another dash. Instead, he spread his palms wide and unleashed a cloud of palm projections in a wide arc toward the enemy.

The demon-puppet was forced to dodge, the thinhorn skated across the grass like he was on ice with rocket skates.

Wood movement techniques were usually considered bottom-tier, but on the grass, he was showing full class.

I finally pulled myself together and joined the fight.

Denis fought from the ground, Bao was still airborne, so I launched myself skyward again, showering the enemy with silver fist projections — Chain Punches, hiding my Hooks behind them.

Most of the projections just shredded grass, missing the twitchy target.

Somehow, this unarmoured puppet was holding its own against all three of us.

"Got him!" Bat shouted into my ear. "Finish him off!"

"I'm trying!" I roared back.

"No, seriously, if you can give him a migraine, it'll make our job a hell of a lot easier."

"Are you even seeing what's going on down here?" I snapped, diving under Bao, whom the thinhorn had just hurled at me mid-air.

Bao clung to his weapon like a vice.

Denis launched another dash, missed the thinhorn entirely, but smashed straight into the vine the demon had anchored into the ground. His body projection surged forward, and the vine, at the point of impact, instantly lost its elasticity, snapped, and broke off.

With that anchor gone, Bao's weight pulled the thinhorn off balance, and Bao slammed into the ground at full speed. He still didn't let go of his mace, and dragged the thinhorn down with him.

That opened things up for Denis and me. A barrage of projections rained down on him from both sides. Palms pierced through him, and fists tore the mask from his bloodied face, shredding his jacket and shirt. He fell still, and let go of the vines.

Bao rolled, scrambled to his feet, and immediately yanked the mace back toward himself. The thinhorn's jacket tore open, finally giving way — revealing a large spool of vine coiled behind his shoulder.

"Is he dead?" Bao asked.

"Bat, is he dead?" I echoed.

"Busy!" Bat shouted, and then my ears rang from a harsh screeching sound.

A second later, a fireball bloomed on the horizon turning into a perfect mushroom cloud.

"What the fuck?" Denis asked, in a voice that somehow sounded exhausted.