Unseen Cultivator

As the giant surged free of the surf, Liao grabbed his bow and ran. Terror raced through his limbs and his heart hammered in his chest. The immense demon, hulking but swift, rocked its mighty arms as it rumbled forward in a startlingly rapid knuckle-walk. Rotating with shocking agility for something so massive, its unblinking vision tracked Liao's form with terrible certainty.

Instinct, a primal human desire to flee in the face of such an immense creature pushed Liao to the edge of panic. Even reasoning as a cultivator, the monster's devastating strength was truly formidable. He saw no means of defeating this foe and followed the natural impulse towards flight instead. Turning north, he sought out the forested hills, thinking to lose the beast between the dense trunks there.

"No! To the sea!" Sayaana's cry rang out through his skull, fierce and sure. "Fight it on the waves. Use the water to win."

As he heard these words, the world slowed. The true depths of the remnant soul's request resonated down into his core, reaching all the way to his dantian. This demand, this challenge, by the immortal shattered all expectations.

To run would be to survive. Liao could evade in the deep woods. He had confidence in his ability to use terrain and vegetation to leave the giant far behind.

Sayaana demanded more. It was no longer enough to simply survive. To be a cultivator here, in the Ruined Wastes, was to fight and conquer. That was the nature of this command, this demand for an achievement beyond all he thought possible.

Linked as they were, Liao could instantly understand the impacts, the foresight, that drove this decision. A giant, the strongest form of demon, represented the last remaining threat of the wilderness to overcome. This battle, this victory, that was the final challenge. Win here, and the world would open up. The privilege to roam free and travel as he wished.

A threat he was not, he believed, ready to face alone, but this was a moment where circumstances favored him. He stared down a pivotal choice, one that resonated all the way to his dantian and beyond, to the stars above and earth below and the world all around, to his dao. There was no time to make that choice, and yet there was an eternity to decide with his enhanced though patterns stretched to their very limit by sudden connection to the infinite.

Accept Sayaana's challenge and fight with all he possessed in the hopes of claiming the world for his boots. Or reject her counsel and flee with every bit of speed he could summon and return to the sect in safety.

In the end, after an agonizing moment of indecision, he abandoned all consideration of the better course. That, he realized, was not what truly mattered, not in this moment. No, trust was the key. Trust in the green woman he'd willingly bound to his soul. It was, ultimately, the only real option. If he could not rely on Sayaana, he would never accomplish anything that mattered.

Running east, Liao utilized the curving nature of the beachfront to reach the water before the giant could close the distance to attack.

The demon was freakishly fast. Though it was immense, easily the size of several elephants mashed together, it could outrun a sprinting wolf and turn completely around in a single sweeping stride. Nothing so massive ought to move in this manner, but demon qi did not respect the barriers that bound all natural life together.

Neither did light, and the Stellar Flash Steps carried booted feet out over the waves ahead of the wheeling pillars and their grasping stone-bone spear-length fingers.

Projecting qi carefully out from his feet and stepping constantly, Liao utilized his movement technique to dance atop the waves. Every time he sank up to his ankles into the salt-soaked blue he jolted forward again, restoring his position atop the surf. He dashed erratically, back and forth in a serpentine pattern, but always eastward toward the rising sun.

This move drew the giant behind him in a straight line. The distance between them increased significantly, expanding vastly in just a few steps. Surprised, for he had not expected the giant to slow for anything, Liao looked back. His eyes widened as he turned, and as he watched the giant take a massive step, the true nature of Sayaana's strategy was laid bare.

Up to its shoulders in the waves, the demon had to fight its way through the water with every step. Unbelievably heavy due to its iron-hard bones and granitic skin, the demon could not possibly swim. Normally, this hindered it little. It could walk perfectly well across the ocean floor and had no need to breathe. Partially immersed, however, it had to push against the water with every stride while pursuing an opponent who moved about freely in the open air. Its limited speed could never catch the cultivator dancing across the surface.

Tasting the power of this advantage, Liao jumped upwards. Spinning through the air, he pulled forth an arrow, drew to full draw, and shot the demon.

The qi-reinforced barb traversed the distance behind the snap-thrum of its release and embedded into the giant's shoulder with a thump reminiscent of a crossbow bolt slammed into an oak tree at twenty meters despite crossing ten times that distance. Though the white fletching still shone beneath the morning sun above the demon's skin, the hardened iron of the arrowhead had vanished. A finger-length and hand-broad chunk of metal now sat embedded within the giant's flesh.

A good hit, but as Liao strode further out over the waves his heart sank. There were twenty-four arrows in his quiver, and only half bore the massive broadheads used in demon-slaying. "I don't have enough arrows," he hissed along the wind to Sayaana. He might, with enough strikes, bleed the giant to death, but he recalled Su Yi's battle with this mighty form of demon. It would take two hundred shots, or even more. Powerful techniques, imbued with substantial qi, could reduce that requirement, but depleting his reserves would leave him sinking into the sea, easy prey for the monster.

Lamenting as he ran, he launched two more arrows to strike the demon. These struck home, joining their forerunner in the giant's left shoulder. Pushing through the water, the beast could barely dodge or block, and the barbs clustered accordingly. A slow-growing stain emerged upon the joint of the great pillar-limb, blood pushing through as the demon ran and swung the massive arms.

Seeing that dripping sign of black blood, Liao realized the beginnings of a desperate plan. Bleed the joint, ruining it and immobilizing the limb. In this way he might stand some chance of survival if forced to draw daggers.

Not that he could even imagine closing with the demon. He would run first, whatever commands Sayaana cried through his mind. There was nothing to be gained fighting a hopeless battle.

But he did not stop, not yet. Sayaana had directed him upon this path. If the former immortal believed there was a chance for victory, it must exist.

A reminder followed his hissed declaration. "You're thinking like a mortal again." She said no more than this, but confidence passed across their link of shared qi and stabilized his resolve. The giant grunted and roared as it pushed through the waves, but it could not make up lost ground. The ocean, the great blanket that coated the bulk of the world, remained an impediment to the plague's supremacy.

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Though, it was not entirely one-sided. Standing atop the waves, Liao could not brace his body and shoot at full strength.

His eyes widened at this thought, for it offered a critical piece of inspiration. He yearned to put the idea to the test but could not do so just yet. Arrows still mattered, and he knew he needed to make every last one count.

Twenty-three times Liao jumped, turned, and shot. Every arrow was aimed at the same point, just inside the left shoulder joint of the giant. Demons had been humans, once, and beneath the twisted crimson surface a human bone structure remained. Anatomy whose vulnerabilities the sect taught, grim-faced, to all its recruits. Arrow after arrow, Liao drilled the barbs into the joint. Hunting, seeking, and digging over and over for the artery he knew lay there, sheltered beneath ribbons of thick musculature.

If he could rip open a path wrought in injury and gore and pierce that vessel the demon's blood would spill out into the ocean by the barrel full.

Monster though it was, the plague-guided giant retained a measure of cruel reason. It was far from blind to its weak points. In the face of those flying, pointed shafts it twisted and turned, constantly seeking to deflect them away using either the rocky exterior of its shoulder or the formidable horns adorning its skull. No impact on that stony armor, thick as a man's arm, could do more than uselessly scrape across the hide.

Once again, the ocean aided Liao. Possessing arms far longer than its legs, a disparity much greater than that found on even the largest gibbons, the giant had to rely upon all four limbs to move swiftly. Trapped half-submerged in water, this limitation grew far more severe. Without the great arms to anchor the body and hold it upright, the giant would pitch forward. With its balance lost, Liao's arrows would inevitably find their way into the eyes and pierce the brain behind. The thing knew enough to sacrifice its shoulder to shield those lightless orbs.

A human foe, sensing this weakness, would have retreated to the shore and changed the nature of the battle, but the plague could not reason in this way, could not put aside its hunger for human qi. The enemy, the prey, before it now, must be chased, must be consumed. Base instincts told the giant that the foe would tire, given time. That the tiny thing that dared to strike at it would eventually slip beneath the surface and fall into the grasp of its crushing grip.

The arrows buried within its body did not inflict pain, the plague had taken that sensation from it long ago. There was only the need to pursue. Attrition was the plague's weapon, the foundation of its evolution.

That the ocean could turn this against it lay completely outside the disease's programmatic interpretation of the world.

The resulting clash was reduced in this way down to a terribly simple variable. Liao expended all his arrows save one, running ahead across the sea until his quiver held only the last possible strike, held in reserve. He would need it for the final blow, should the opportunity ever come. The one that must kill, for he would not be able to sustain the chase thereafter. Should it fail, nothing but a crushing end beneath the hammer blows of mountainous fists awaited him.

Twenty-one shafts protruded from the giant's shoulder. Only two arrows had failed to find their mark.

Not enough. Not nearly enough. The giant had not even lost the use of the arm, much less begun to bleed critically. More strikes were necessary. Many more. And Sayaana's admonishment had shown him the way.

Reaching into one of the storage bracelets bound against his chest, Liao pulled free one of the teeth he'd torn out of the fallen female shark's jaw the night before. Long, pointed, and sharp, it strongly resembled a bodkin point. Even better, it had once been living tissue and drank in the qi he poured within it without resistance.

Pulling back the string of his bow, he placed the shark's tooth in place as if it was an arrow. A line qi rippled out from the rough root of the tooth extending all the way to the edge of his thumb ring. An arrow shaft formed not of wood but of qi.

One that flew equally true.

Liao released the lock formed by his thumb ring, bright white with the raw force of stellar qi, a color shared with that of the stark, gleaming dentine that formed the crown of the tooth, and it flew swiftly over the waves. The improvised arrow, shark tooth and qi, slammed into the giant's shoulder and struck at the base of one of the many embedded shafts.

Hide weakened by numerous impacts permitted the triangular spike entry through the skin. Once there the dentine projectile, far softer than iron even with qi lacing through its structure, shattered against the corded muscle fibers. Tiny fragments, razor sharp carbon blades, splashed outward, exploding inside the wound. They rent through muscle, tendon, and capillaries. Blood spilled into countless cavities along the edge of the ragged hole the impact opened.

The size of the blood stain upon the giant's reddened limb increased measurably. The demon roared in rage, but its injured arm failed to propel a wrathful charge to bring it into deadly grapple with its hated enemy.

Furious hope burst within Liao as the technique triggered successfully. The next step, markedly more difficult than the one that preceded it, instantly tempered that emotional release. He had run for kilometers already, reliant upon the Stellar Flash Steps to keep him above the waves. This reduced his reserves, but that single arrow formed of qi had drained him far more.

Shark teeth were abundant, he had dozens. There were also the larger conical teeth of the scaled shoreline predators, should they be needed. Far more potential missiles than his qi supply could sustain. Every strike mattered now. Misses could not be permitted. The maximum amount of damage must be dealt before the final, deciding blow fell.

He needed to reserve a store of qi for that killing stroke, but nothing else, not at all. To hold back otherwise meant death. He would crawl to shore as weak as an exhausted mortal so long as he sank the body of his foe to the seafloor. It would take every drop of qi his dantian contained and far more than twenty-three strikes.

He began at once.

Thirty-five of the largest shark teeth. Fourteen of the piercing cones. Forty-nine strikes in total, a sacred number, somehow inevitable in that moment. The final arrow, containing all the qi that remained to Liao, would be fifty, the number of the sage.

A barb dispatched alongside a prayer for victory.

He reached across the darkness of the void and through his dantian, pulling the furious pure power of qi down from the stars over the whole of his body, his bow, and his last arrow. Gathered to a moment of maximum strain and then released. Nine Spheres Arsenal Bow Arts First Form: Starlight Barb.

Every particle of the arrow filled with starlight, the maximum capacity each fundamental piece could contain. The giant sensed the threat and bent its head to block with its horns, but this strike came dozens of times faster than any previous attack. The effort to turn had not even begun when the arrow impacted.

It sank into the left shoulder all the way until the fletching vanished in a single eyeblink.

In the next instant, the qi-construct collapsed, and the arrow exploded.

Wounded tissue, having suffered through six dozen impacts, failed catastrophically. The front half of the joint shredded and disintegrated. The massive limb remained attached to the body only by a thread at the rear. Off-balance, the giant slumped down even as blood fountained from countless severed vessels and turned the ocean black surrounding it.

Liao let out his breath and the last of his qi. His hold upon the water lapsed and he splashed down to chest deep immersion immediately. Arms wide, bow held above his head to preserve it, he treaded water desperately. It took all his remaining strength, every muscle aching, just to hold his head above water.

The giant, to his astonishment, did not stop. Dragging the useless, half-severed limb through the seabed, it rumbled forward, roaring as it came. Liao, unable to evade, incapable of more than weak swimming, watched in horror as the demon's right arm came up as it shuddered forward inexorably.

Stone-faced fingers the size of a human's leg opened up and expanded to reach out and grasp him, entwining about his body from shoulders to toes. In an obsessive, uncompromising, final effort, the giant sought to squeeze the life from his body.

Bones squeezed as the giant's grip clenched down, but even as the pain closed over Liao's body, the fingers began to dissipate away. The surrounding water filled with vermillion bubbles.

Liao slipped free of the giant's crushing grip as its death overcame its existence. The incredible force of the demon collapsed into the water and air as if it had never been.

Gasping in terror, heart pounding as if it sought to escape his chest, the cultivator turned away from the demon and slowly swam back toward the dunes. Once he'd managed to pull his body up into the grasses he rolled over and collapsed into mindless slumber.