Unseen Cultivator

Demons could not swim. Their bodies, with reinforced bones, strengthened muscles, and an almost total absence of fat were too dense to allow it. This did not make them completely incapable while in water. Ghouls, notably, could utilize their long claws to propel themselves along the bottom quite swiftly, much faster than any mortal and many weak cultivators could swim. Though such motion made them unexpectedly dangerous, it could never compare to the speed of a cultivator running across the surface of the sea.

In this disparity Liao detected and exploited a critical opportunity. By running across the waves, he could outpace almost the entire aggregation of thousands of demons. It was a method Sayaana knew well, relying upon speed rather than stealth. There was, after all, no real means to prevent the demons from noticing the shadow of a cultivator passing overhead in shallow water, but there was also little the ghouls could do to stop such a runner.

A cultivator on the surface of the waves could be spotted by an airborne demonic cultivator quite easily even across vast distances, but Liao did not fear this much. With his qi undetectable, he could not easily be differentiated as a human, and his body, crashing through the waves, would be easily mistaken for a porpoise or seal – animals rather abundant in the rich waters of the bay.

If necessary, he could always sink down into the depths as well and rely upon the protection of the black. Immortals could see in lightless environs, but turbidity impacted them even so. Sayaana knew this well and had even tested it. A short jaunt over the waves, with no aerial enemies nearby, offered minimal risk.

It was not even one hundred kilometers from the end of the peninsula at the edge of the bay to his destination; a distance Liao crossed in less than an hour even with his speed restricted by the need to run over water. The qi expended to induce such haste was considerable, but he made the choice for speed before endurance in the moment. Even without laying eyes upon any demons, though he could still feel them in their still-growing legions advancing along the bottom, his destination was obvious.

It rose from the ocean in stark grandeur, a great blunt-topped cone. The clear mark of a volcano that burst free of the depths thousands of years in the past. Ash blankets lying heavy upon the upper slopes of the great conical tower indicated that this mountain was far from finished rising from the sea, though the equally widespread layer of white provided by seabird colonies made it equally clear that it was presently quiescent.

Green shrubby growth covered the lower flanks out to the very edge of the rocky shores, with only intermittent interruptions by black sand beaches offering access.

This geology benefited Liao's approach. While the demons congregated along the beaches in order to haul ashore and move inland upon walkable slopes, he gathered qi beneath his feet and flashed directly to the top of a high cliff on the island's northern reaches. Running hard, he swiftly slipped through a gap between the rush of ghouls and moved into the scrub woodlands coating the lower stretches.

The red onslaught marched inland in loose streams, as if they were ants climbing a sand pile. Their quarry, revealed by this progression, lay inland and high up on the slopes near to the very edge of the caldera crater. Liao, taking a quick estimate from what he saw on the beaches, determined there must already be thousands of demons on the island. Another twenty thousand or more would surely arrive in the next few days.

"Slopes are a good place to fight," Sayaana noted in a sour tone. "But a bad place to escape. If there is someone here, they've chosen to die with blade in hand."

It took Liao a moment, as he crept through the vibrant green growth – thicker here than on the main islands – to parse the meaning of those hard words. When he did, he found that a similar sour sensation began to creep over his tongue. Ghouls were strong and surefooted, but managed cliffs and walls poorly. On the heights a cultivator could dance about among their ranks, staying ahead of the claws and cutting down enemies in droves. They would extract a heavy toll to be sure, but they would also be surrounded. Burning through their qi, the exhausted end was inevitable.

"If you kill a thousand demons, or even ten thousand, before you fall, is that a trade in your favor?" Itinay had put that question to Liao once, an investigation of recklessness. "There is a place in battle for valiant last stands, but if you choose to sell your life, make certain the price is a worthy one. Death is ever a great cheat."

Sayaana had been considerably more straightforward. "If you can run and live, run. Tomorrow is its own victory."

Whoever fought on the slopes of this volcano, it seemed, did not share that creed, or had abandoned it in despair.

It soon became clear that battle had been joined long before Liao's arrival and continued to be fought with every step he advanced. The scrub forest and bunched grassland covering the mountain slopes was frightfully devoid of natural noise. Birds had fled and insects had fallen silent. From high above there came echoes and rumbling crashes as rocks shifted and rolled, and the footfalls of the demons as they climbed in unison soon thundered against the hard-packed volcanic earth.

Liao wanted to run up those slopes, to charge toward the great caldera and discover the truth waiting on the heights. It burned through him, the possibilities, the need to act. If there was someone here, he could aid them, save them even. He dared not shirk that duty. All the calculation in the world, all the speculation as to lives he'd saved by shortening or averting battle, that was nothing compared to the dream of saving another cultivator in the face of demonic assault.

Nothing could have turned him back from the ascent.

Training, drilled hard into him by Sayaana and reinforced by the feelings that flowed through their linked qi, sufficed only to keep him from charging forward recklessly. Stealth, the knowledge that if his position was revealed these heights might see two fall rather than one saved, grounded, him. He moved as fast as he could but kept hidden amid the vegetation.

Carefully advancing up a series of narrow, lava-carved valleys, Liao walked with a dagger in each hand. Every time he spotted a demon ahead; he took a step. Flashing forward, he plunged both blades into the red back and twisted sharply, carving as much circle as required until the ghoul dissipated. Vegetation, hard and sometimes thorn-coated, struck and snapped against his body every time, but the reinforced nature of his being made this no more impactful than a silken brush tickling his face.

Demons fell to those flicker-swift ambushes by the dozens, a ghoul taken for roughly every hundred meters he advanced.

Elevation increased, the trees and shrubs gave way to grassy mounds, and the demons grew more numerous. The caldera edge, high and brutally rugged, loomed close. Bare stone, pinkish-orange and hard-edged, it offered no purchase to plant life. It also captured and threw out sound, bathing the peak in the howling rage of the demons and the periodic sick-sweet thumping sound of sharp metal cleaving deep into thick flesh.

Recognizing he could proceed no further unobserved, Liao raced west, away from the din of battle and the main force of demons. Then, charging up to the crest of a ridge, he launched into a flying leap. Pivoting in midair, he drew upon the full potency of his awareness and the power of the Stellar Flash Steps to double, triple, and finally quadruple jump across the gap in an eyeblink until he landed hard atop the wall of volcanic rock.

The demons noticed him within moments, but by flanking them in such a drastic manner he'd gained the time needed to pull his bow free of his back and, with the vastly expanded sensory processing capacity his cultivation offered him, to take in the entire scene at one glance.

Battle raged two hundred meters to the northeast, a desperate and doomed struggle that had gone on for hours and was now entering its final stages. Concentric rings of demons, at least four now and growing as more ghouls emerged from the forests below with each passing minute, pressed in around a single point. The closest of the red-clawed monsters would lunge, be slain, and then be replaced, tightening the vise as the grouping scrambled ever closer to a terminal, crushing, dogpile.

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Blades flashed out, severing heads, cleaving torsos, and obliterating limbs as a lone figure whirled and chopped away at the attacking legion. A lonely grasshopper, beset by red ants on all sides. Still strong enough to fight but no longer possessing the vigor to leap away. Pale blue garb, fragmented by irregular white inserts, clothed a female warrior layered heavy in mud, dust, sweat, and grime as she swung paired swords in a final, slowly collapsing defense.

Blood flowed from at least a dozen minor wounds. Her outfit, a simple one-piece wrap that covered neither shoulders nor thighs and suggested swimwear rather than battle armor to Liao's eyes, was torn at equally numerous places. Simple sandals and vambraces on the forearms and shins were likewise near to collapse. Only the swords, long and narrow blades with a single edge and the barest hint of a curve extending out to the tapered tip, remained whole. Bright and shining implements of many-layered steel that radiated salt-tinged water qi, they girded her with lethal, liquid grace.

The embattled warrior matched the grace of her weapons. Fluid, agile, and almost impossibly flexible, she twisted and slipped through the ghouls in a flowing dance that saw a demon slain for every step. Spinning and whirling, she carved free an untouchable space amid the encirclement, preventing the catastrophic collapse from ever cohering. Red mist, the remains of her fallen foes, surrounded her and the striking swords.

A true martial cultivator, Liao realized at once. Tied to a martial dao and committed to ascension through conflict and victory, she was fully given to battle. That dao, with its focus on weapon forms and the perfection of the arts of death, was familiar. Grand Elder Akiray possessed such deadly centering, and this woman did too, though at a level appropriate to her cultivation.

That, too, was strong, something Liao could not help but feel as her exertions released the last remnants of her power. She stood in the awareness integration realm, but above him. The fifth layer, or perhaps the sixth, a reserve of strength able to slaughter demons for days.

Perhaps she had at that, but this little war atop the dormant volcano had run its course. Even as Liao acknowledged the martial cultivator's strength, he also recognized its depletion. Her qi was a weak, flickering expression of the dao, one on the edge of guttering out entirely. She might fight on for hours yet, driven by desperation to struggle beyond the edge of fatal stamina loss, but there would be no mighty strikes and no escape. A single mistake, one stumble or slip, and that would be the end. The plague, endlessly patient and always hungry, would claim this prize without needing to hurry.

Liao, processing all of this in an instant, knew that he had to act at once, now, while the cultivator retained the strength to run. His bow was already in hand. He did not bother with a physical arrow but simply pulled back the string with a bolt of qi extended from his fingertips and released the thumb ring.

The skull of a ghoul pressing the woman from the west exploded. Another, its neighbor, followed in the next instant. More fell thereafter, fast as he could draw and loose. Head, chest, pelvis, the sharply aimed blasts of qi shattered one demon after another, ripping a widening hole through the concentric ring that the hunt, scraping against the rough, hard-sloped lava flows, struggling to swiftly fill. Others, detecting the new threat, turned and charged at Liao's perch. Their hunter's encirclement wavered and rippled as they sought two targets at once.

"Run!" Liao cried as he launched his physical arrows, strong enough to pierce through one demon and cripple the next in line, as fast as he could pull and release.

Dark narrow eyes went wide at this one cry. The blue-clad cultivator stared at Liao, focus transcending the moment, as she was shocked free of the death battle trance that had consumed her. Liao realized, in recognition of this response, that she had not sensed him, so lost in the endless battle dance had she been. Only now did she awaken from the deep bit of despair that had reduced her world to swords and ghouls.

A mortal, or even an initiate, would have frozen from shock long enough to be overwhelmed. Disciples in the awareness integration realm processed surprise differently. With shock still contorting her expression, the swordswoman turned in a perfect pirouette and blasted away through the encirclement even as arrows continued to strike the confining demons down.

She did not run in a straight line. Her movement technique, like everything about her, was liquid and fluid. She raced across the ground like the oncoming tide, following the past of least resistance in a sweeping, churning, unceasing advance. This motion carried her around and under grasping claws, sliding and twisting in a manner that left her swords free to reap and slaughter as she passed. Demons within the reach of that steel lost hands, legs, or should they lean in too close, heads to the shifting scissor-snap cuts those frightfully sharp edges unleashed. Like a stream carving its way through loose dirt, the path behind her was cleansed.

Though visually impressive and disturbingly deadly, this fluid movement technique possessed an obvious flaw. It was not fast. Raw speed gave way to allow incredible maneuverability. A reasonable trade, much of the time, but when trying to break through demonic encirclement far from ideal.

Liao had learned, after his encounter with the giant on the southern shore, to carry more arrows, a tactic made possible by his collection of storage rings. Retrieving these additional missiles, however, required two hands and freedom of movement, space the raging ghouls did not provide. Instead, he blasted them with arrows of qi, sacrificing his reserves to let this woman run free at the risk of deadly exhaustion later.

Fifteen meters distant and the water cultivator – the salt-spray flavor of her qi was unmistakable at that distance – jumped. She flipped and twisted in the air, a motion that would have shamed a spinner dolphin, and landed at Liao's feet. The ghouls pursued, but the elevation of the little stone perch forced a detour, just enough distance to buy a gap worth a few critical seconds.

"Who? How?" Questions dropped from the woman's lips, emerging from a small mouth above a sharp angular chin. She spoke the sect speech, for which Liao was immensely grateful, but with a considerable and challenging accent.

"Later," he brushed these queries aside at once. "Have to run." His bow was already restored to its place on his back, secured by the critical provision of snap buckles. The swords, however, presented a difficulty.

If the water cultivator possessed sheaths for her blades, she'd lost them some time previously. "Here," he ripped a storage ring off his bandolier, empty, and reached out to grab the sword she held in her left hand by grasping her wrist. The woman tried to resist, but a combination of weakness and surprise allowed the unexpected move to succeed. Her eyes went wide as the blade vanished into empty space. Understanding took root, swiftly, and by the time the guard disappeared into the cavern of twisted spatial dao the second sword was already on its way. The ring slipped onto her finger faster than Liao could launch an arrow.

With the swords out of the way, Liao reached down and, regretting that there was no time to explain, wrapped his arms around the shoulders and under the knees. The woman gasped, though she seemed surprised rather than scandalized. Taller than Liao and carrying more obvious muscle than he – though such things were almost entirely cosmetic among cultivators in their realm – she presented as an athletic specimen that told a tale of countless hours spent swimming and practicing with her swords, possibly at the same time.

There was no time to think of more. The ghouls had scrambled up the rock even as Liao stepped off it and ran.

He was tired, the few moments of combat draining to him in a way that running all night and much of the day had not, and the cultivator's weight in his arms forced him to awkwardly adjust his balance. This slowed him, both in straight line progress and cornering.

The pursuing ghouls were fast, abundant, and tireless. They sought to converge and surround even as he began to escape, but they were out of position and mostly advancing from the north. Liao went west, descending toward the ocean, and he was propelled by the Stellar Flash Steps.

Nothing was faster than light.

Down they plunged through canyon and forest, heedless of all obstacles. Branches struck arms and faces. Spiderwebs and vines were torn through by main force. Debris, insects, and leaves coated their bodies as they pressed through the undergrowth until they shot through rare gaps and the wind ripped everything free again. Demons turned to intercept and strike, but Liao simply raced past, too swift to follow. In one case he jumped over a whole line of ghouls, landed atop the high and level trunk of a dead tree, and shattered the rotten wood with the force of his passage as he blasted into his next step.

Accelerating throughout, he made no move to halt even as the coastal cliffs came into view, but instead simply raced off the edge in a flying leap that saw them plunge furiously into the sea. Blue and white foam fountained on all sides as they struck. The high-speed impact sufficed to spawn bruises from toes to knees on Liao's legs and would have surely killed a mortal. In response to the brief burst of pain he simply grunted, kicked his way back to the surface, and started running across the waves once again.

Mid-leap, he'd glimpsed a small group of tiny islands, barely more than loose rocks, not ten kilometers to the west. Tired though he was, they were within reach and offered an opportunity for temporary respite. It was enough, for now, and he set his flashing steps toward that goal.