Unseen Cultivator

"The current obeys the ocean!" Amami Yoko's swords rose in each hand. Qi swirled about her, wrapping arms, legs, and blades in fluid, rushing, liquid power. It gathered and then burst. "Crashing Wave Arts Second Form: Surge!"

She exploded forward, rushing through a sweeping, wavy, irregular charge that saw her bash into the raised spear of the puppet Toru, sweep past his angled weapon, crash both swords against his chest, and continue ahead without slowing. A mighty strike, one enhanced by the immortal-grade swords she carried. Kura and Shiruya, forged from the hearts of undersea volcanoes, sliced clean through the ordinary enhanced spear the puppet possessed and slammed through the protective lamellar armor on the chest to cut deep.

As the warrior passed by, the puppet that turned to follow its newly declared enemy displayed deep gouges across the ribs. Blood, preserved in its proper place within the corpse, oozed slowly outward from the wound. This damage, though significant, did not halt the puppet any more than it would have any cultivator in the spirit tempering realm.

Disarmed, the puppet advanced rather than fall back. An automaton controlled by a callous master, it acted not as a living opponent might, but as one commanded to capture the target without any thoughts of its own. Arms clad in heavy gauntlets snapped out and grabbed both blades edge on, superior strength, speed, and reach allowed this devastating counter even as Toru's reanimated form lost four fingers and had his palms nearly sliced in half.

Ever fluid in her responses, Amami Yoko pushed forward. Stepping into the grasp of her foe, she kicked out with both feet, striking hard against each of his knees and using her full weight to wrench the swords forth from the puppet's grasp.

Bold and cunning, this move knocked Toru back, freeing the water cultivator as the puppet briefly dropped to one knee in a search for balance.

In the same moment, Taro surged forward, spear leveled. The puppet could not wield qi-empowered attacks, but it retained the strength and speed of an elder, more than enough to skewer his target however the remnant soul desired. The spearhead moved to rip and tear, a strike directed to sever the muscles of the right thigh and leave Amami Yoko crippled and immobile.

Drawing on her qi reserves even further, the water cultivator pulled her freed swords in tight. With blades parallel to the line of her spine even as she descended toward the floor, she unleashed another potent sword strike. "Crashing Wave Arts Fourth Form: Maelstrom!"

Amami Yoko spun in the air, body and blades as a waterspout, throwing out countless whips of pummeling water qi, hammer blow after hammer blow.

Water slammed against Taro's spearhead, knocking it aside enough to turn a crippling blow into nothing more than a slight gash along the outer edge of the thigh. This move did not, however, halt the puppet's charge.

Dropping his weapon, Taro took dozens of watery hammer blows across his armor and face even as he reached out and tackled the athletic woman using the full mass of his large and armored form. The water cultivator crashed to the floor, secured completely inside the corpse's ironclad embrace.

But in that moment of devastating capture both puppets were engaged with the warrior of the Great Waves Sect. Their spears were lost to them. The path from door to crystal lay open, unbarred.

Calling upon the unmatched speed of light, Qing Liao flashed forward.

He did not move in a straight line, not willing to dare the chaotic nexus of power invoked by the meteorite. Instead, he followed the pattern of the pentagon, one step left, one step back, and advanced upon the crystal.

Toru, severed fingers flying free from broken hands, moved to intercept. Powered by a movement technique that saw him slide forward completely free of friction. Swift indeed, but Liao had anticipated such a countermove. Twisting between steps, he spun low to slither like a snake and snapped around the puppet as it attempted to intercept. Rolling across the floor, he came up in front of the crystal plinth with daggers in hand.

Shingo's projection simply smiled at the presence of those weapons.

Doubtless his receptacle was suitably hardened such that only mighty weapons and immortal strength could possibly damage diamond-hard quartz. Un-augmented daggers wielded by a mere disciple would be unlikely to even scratch the surface.

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The daggers made no move. Instead, Liao slammed his forehead into the quartz. The turquoise gem that rested on his brow struck head-on, brought into direct contact with the transparent matrix.

"What?" Shingo's veneer of perfect control collapsed utterly. Shock spread across his milky face.

The puppet-strung corpses of Taro and Toru collapsed to the floor, their manipulation severed instantly.

Light flooded the chamber, the projection from within the plinth suddenly expanding to fill the room with flickering, luminous imagery. The white-robed pale-skinned black-eyed presence of Shingo towered there, translucent and far larger than life. His power, the echo of his existence as an immortal, radiated in every direction. His dao, callous, uncaring, and deadly in its supreme arrogance, pressured the pair of awareness integration cultivators down to the floor through shear presence.

But he did not stand alone.

A woman, short, of compact build, and cast in green armor fringed with furs, stood before him bathed in verdant radiance. Her skin was dyed in endless shifting shades of green, and bark-like ridges laced her cheeks. Bright turquoise eyes swam in her face, offering a world of wild wonder and energetic enticement. She carried a large and powerful compound bow on her back and short spears with single-edged chopping bladed heads in each hand.

"My turn," Sayaana whispered, and a brilliant smile exploded across her face.

"Ah, so that was the anomaly I sensed," Shingo's mask of absolute authority reassembled swiftly. "How amusing, to meet a new immortal, born in this era, even dead, but you are only in the first layer. You cannot possibly defeat me."

"Dao to dao, you'd be right," the smile did not waver an eyelash. "But I am not fighting alone am I?"

Liao held the gem against the quartz with neck muscles pressed like iron. He felt the qi flow through him, a huge rush from his dantian through his spine and across the bones of his skull. It went freely, pushed by all the control he could sustain, all the strength he could offer, an unrelenting effort to supply the weaponry Sayaana needed to fight soul to soul.

"Wretch!" Shingo's controlled illusion shattered. His mouth twisted into a rictus snarl and black lines, veins suffused with his killing dao, charted an enmeshed map across his flesh as he dropped into all-consuming fury. Hands snapped up to guard and the robed immortal exploded forward into a series of savage unrelenting palm strikes.

Bladed spears blocked, a weaving, sweeping network of interlocking wood and iron parries intercepting one devastatingly potent snap-slap after another. Again and again, the furious blows were shunted, shifted, and scattered away, deflected along the edge of the spinning lattice of the northern hunter's guard. Strike after strike against wood and steel, never protective plating.

With absolute control and complete devotion to killing intent, Shingo rained down endless blows in an unceasing stream. With each blocked strike he ratcheted forward and increased his speed. Each new blow exploded faster, sharper, and harder than the last. Sayaana could only parry aside these impacts, never counter, never launch a single strike of her own. The elder remnant's deadly dao, merciless and murderous, slowly and steadily overwhelmed her defenses.

How long it took, how many hundreds of impacts, Liao did not know. He could not move, could not follow, and did not dare relax. Overwhelming as the circumstances appeared, he held fast, trusting in the woman whose vigilance had kept him safe for a century and a half. Somewhere, behind him, Amami Yoko stood and watched, paired swords at the ready.

Inevitably, the moment came. A strike slipped through, a black-lined palm slammed hard against the green-girded chest. The impact left a devastating imprint in the boiled leather lamellar that lay beneath the green outer garments.

Sayaana grunted, but she never stopped smiling even as the blow hurled her back, flying across the room.

Bladed spears dropped from her hands. Allowing the momentum imparted by Shingo's blow to carry her, to open a gap, Sayaana reached back and ripped free her gorgeous, glorious compound bow. A single arrow, held at the ready by a cunning deer hide strap device, dangled from the string.

The deadly remnant soul, master of the Endless Mysteries Sect, lunged forward, but he was chasing his own missile and already too late.

The bowstring pulled back, and Liao shuddered as qi drained out from him until he could barely hold his head upright. That power streaked through the projection, turning from starry sky blue to deep forest green as it wrapped about bow, arrow, and vambraces. "Taiga's Wrath Archery Fourth Form: Pulverizing Storm!"

As the arrow flew forth it spawned behind it, trailing its path in a dense, expanding cone, tens of thousands of silver-white qi needles. These, pulled by the momentum of their progenitor, followed the path perfectly, saturating the cylinder of its advance with a deluge of razor-sharp spikes.

Shingo, amazingly, reacted by slapping his hands together. He caught the oncoming arrow between burning palms. The missile stopped dead a hair's breadth from the center of his eyes.

This remarkable display of control made no difference at all.

Countless needles pierced his robes, stuck into his skin, and covered him in spines until he resembled a silver hedgehog.

Then, releasing all the qi that created them in a single united burst, the silver needles exploded with the violence of a tree burst apart by extreme cold in devastating, splinter-spawning discharge.

Shingo had no time to even scream. His spirit was shredded from without and within, pulverized into countless pieces of milky white nothing that swiftly dissipated.

"Ha!" Sayaana crowed in triumph even as her soul flowed back down the link and returned to the turquoise receptacle.