Chapter 59: Crystallizing Beam

A/N: Hey everyone! Hope you've had a good start to the week. Here's another chapter. Hope you all enjoy it!

Chapter 59:  

“Guys, it’s me!” I said as my friends and the archer all looked down at my fox in confusion. “It’s Lan.”

That earned me two different kinds of looks. The archer wearing alchemist guard robes that I didn’t recognize just looked down at me in confusion and suspicion. Jianfeng and Lin, however, only had a brief look of confusion before their eyes widened in realization.

No doubt they realized this was a new Skill I got while away from them.

“Did you transform into this?” Lin asked, looking like she wanted to kneel for a second before she thought better of it. We had a moment to breathe, but it was still possible for the other beast-men around us to avoid their current opponents and attack us if we got too reckless.

“No, it's like a construct,” I said, shaking the fox’s head. I turned back in the direction of my main body. “I’m over there, past the bridge with Pan Song and… one more person. I have a plan to help with the fight, but I need your help.”

“We're hardly in a condition to help with some plan,” the unnamed archer said, a frown on his face as blood leaked from a wound on his head. His eyes were squinted, and he looked like he might fall over for a second. “Not when we need to help our fellows against these beastly men.”

“You don’t need to do much,” I said, shaking my fox’s head. At the same time, I focused on the balls of foxfire that still clung to the dead bear man and made them all float towards my fox. “I just need someone to bring me to the spirit beast side of the fight. Make sure no one thinks my fox is an enemy. Once there, amidst all the fighting, I should be able to spread out my foxfire as much as I can. That will let me do a lot.”

“I can take you myself,” Lin said, nodding and offering up her free arm to me. 

It was her right arm, the same one I noticed her disfavouring before. I’d thought she’d injured it. I tilted my fox's head up at her questioningly, but she just beckoned me again. So I took her up on her offer and had my fox leap up at her. She caught it with one arm, grunting only a little as she adjusted her hold.

“You two try your best to help out here,” Lin said to Jianfeng and the archer once she had a good grip of my fox.

The archer looked like he wanted to protest, but Jianfeng stepped up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t help but notice Jianfeng’s slight limp as he did.

“We’ll do that,” Jianfeng said, nodding at Lin and my fox. He patted the archer on the shoulder. “Shi Lou, just stick close to me and support our fellows from afar. I will keep anyone who tries to approach at a distance.”

Shi Lou grimaced at that before sighing and nodding.

Lin took that as her cue to leave and turned towards the side of the fighting where the spirit beasts were.

“Do you have a plan for all the Qi you’ll gain?” Lin asked in a low voice, showing she had an idea of what I wanted to do. “Or do you hope to turn the tide by draining as much as you can?”

“I’ll use the same technique I used to get us out of the mines,” I said in an equally low voice as Lin rushed past other fights. Soon, we reached a part of the bridge where it looked like some of our allies were taking a rest from the fighting. They all showed signs of injuries, but none that would have kept them out of the fight. Likely that was because they were rotating who was on the front lines against the beasts. “That will let us get close. Then I’ll use it to power my most Qi-intensive move, and hopefully the surprise and constant attack will let us turn the tide on that side. Pan Song will help hide us.”

“As good a plan as any,” Lin said as she stopped several steps behind the main line of defense.

Said defensive line was made up of several dozen cultivators fighting. They used the limited space of the bridge to avoid fighting the hundreds of spirit beasts all at once. To help with this further, someone had formed large block-shaped boulders right at the edge of the bridge, further narrowing the space the spirit beasts could easily push through. 

Given the familiar jade and silver robes of the cultivators fighting on top of those blocks, it seemed that members of the Zhu clan were with us. Several of those members fought from on top of those earth blocks, sending out tendrils and spears of stone to fight off any beast that tried to climb over.

The fighting on this side of the bridge was much more intense than on the other side. The beast-like men, for all their viciousness and snarling, were still people. They fought aggressively, especially with their healing factor, but they weren’t completely reckless.

The spirit beasts, on the other hand, fighting in a tide, driven by who knows what, were far more aggressive. Their snarls and roars were constant as they tried to overwhelm the defenders. They threw themselves forward with almost reckless abandon. So much so that if they had been foaming at the mouth, I would not have been surprised. 

It was frightening to behold, and the only saving grace was that a majority of the beasts here seemed weak. The cultivators were able to hold them off for now, killing their opponents while taking minimal injuries.

After taking this all in quickly, I focused on the foxfire stuck to my fox’s body and sent them all flying into the air. It took a lot to control so many, but at the moment I could afford to put all my mind to the task. Something I could not normally do without so much support.

The flames floated in the air, as dim as I could make them. With the bright afternoon sun above, it made it incredibly hard to see. That, combined with the savage fighting and the animalistic tendencies of the beasts, made it really easy for me to start tagging the spirit beasts with foxfire. 

I aimed to only put a single ball on each beast, making it less noticeable to them when I started to drain them. This time, I made sure to send the Qi to my fox first instead of myself. It wasn’t too much at first, as I wanted the drain to go unnoticed. But as more Qi came in and I quickly made more foxfire, the amount of Qi I was getting grew very fast. 

Before long, I had more than 50 balls of foxfire draining spirit beasts. Many of the original ones I’d tag were already dead, their bodies being pushed off the side of the bridge by the fighting. But that was fine, as with so much Qi coming in, I could easily make up for it by redirecting the foxfire or just creating more.

It got to the point where I had to start directing the Qi to my own reserves, lest I overwhelm my fox.

“I’ve done enough here,” I told Lin through my fox. “I’ll have to focus back on my own body. You can just place this fox somewhere close so I can keep making more foxfire when needed.”

Lin agreed to that and said something to someone while gesturing to my fox as she got further from the fighting. I tuned it out as I focused back on my main body.

“Okay, I have the Qi for it now,” I said to Pan Song and Xing Yaling, who were still standing tense around me. Hiding behind the hill, we were out of sight of the bridge, and no other enemies had appeared to wander into us. Perfect. It made things a lot easier.

I placed my left hand on the floor and used Reinforced Burrow Creation to create a tunnel downward. The ground melted away beneath me, lowering me like I was on some kind of strange elevator. Three yards down, I stopped and started pushing the tunnel in the direction of the bridge. Behind me, I could hear Pan Song and Xing Yaling jump down to follow me.

With so much Qi coming in and even my extra reserves starting to fill, I did not need to hold back on the size of the tunnel. Not even to help speed things along, I realized as loose earth turned to smooth stone tunnels all around me. Pushing my Skill to the limits, with so much Qi, I could create the tunnel while walking at full speed. 

It didn’t take us long to get into position. I could feel it when we got there with my Earth Sense, the end of the dirt and stone above and the start of the bridge. Using my Skill, I dug upwards until I reached just below the surface to not show any signs of what was happening to those above. Then I cleared up more space for Pan Song to set up his formation.

The beast-like men should be too focused to really notice, regardless, but better to be safe than sorry.

“You can set up your formation there,” I told Pan Song.

He nodded and got to work, quickly and efficiently stabbing his flags upside down into the ceiling above us. After making several dozen quick hand seals, the flags all started to glow with a shallow blue light.

“It’s done,” Pan Song said before turning to face Xing Yaling and me. “Remember, because we are so close for us to attack, the obscuring formation is smaller than normal. That means if the enemy reaches it, the mists will not be able to confuse them for long. Just a moment, and they’ll likely get inside and attack us.”

“Understood,” I said, grinning and trying to be confident. I wasn’t completely sure if we’d be able to turn the tide with this. It seemed likely, but it was always possible that the enemy had their own trump cards. But it was still better to do something than nothing, so I forced the doubts from my mind.

Instead, I reached up and created a hole for us to climb out of. The three of us hopped out of the tunnel with little effort before we quickly surveyed our surroundings. Like I’d planned, we were just at the very edge of our side of the bridge and—shit!

There was a snarl and a roar as a big boar-like man charged me. For some reason, he’d been at the very edge of the bridge. He wielded two heavy axes and swung them right at my head, covering the short distance between us in a blink.

I tried to leap back to avoid it, but it had come so suddenly that I tripped. Then I tried to reach for my sword, but the crystal buried in my right hand reminded me it was there and stopped me. Shit!

Something cold, icy, and white flew over my head as I fell. It took the boar man right in the neck, stopping him in his tracks. His axes whiffed right in front of my face, the force behind the strike enough to cause a sharp pain from the tip of my nose. 

He snarled in fury, dropping one of his axes to try and grip the spear in his throat. Xing Yaling twisted her spear before he could, and a surge of cold Qi caused bloody ice to form from his neck. It grew upward, encasing his head too fast for him to react. Then the whole thing, his head included, shattered into icy pieces.

His corpse, large, muscular, and headless, toppled over onto the ground. Whatever healing factor he might have had was not enough to heal from losing his head. I stared at it for a moment, my breathing hard and my chest heaving.

“You brought us too close,” Xing Yaling said from behind me, her breathing hard as well. 

I quickly got to my feet and turned to look around to make sure none of the other beast-like men were around. Thankfully, there weren’t any, and neither did they notice the loss of their fellow. I turned to check on Xing Yaling next, grimacing as I saw her clutching her stomach. Blood was starting to seep from her wound once more. A reminder that she was still very much injured.

“Sorry,” I said, almost reaching out towards her, but stopping myself. It wasn’t like there was anything I could do to help.

“Apologize by helping end this,” Xing Yaling said, shaking her head and gesturing to the bridge with her spear. “If we do that, perhaps our allies will have some healing supplies.”

“Right,” I said, straightening up and turning back towards the fighting. To my left, Pan Song started throwing out more formation flags. Those would be his offensive arrays. They didn’t really have the range to hit the enemies ahead. But they would be helpful when the enemy inevitably decided to investigate the new source of attack.

Ahead of us, and further along the bridge, the battle continued to rage. Things still seemed to be at a bit of a stalemate, though things were starting to slide in the direction of the beast-like men. They had lost three more of their people, their corpses ignored amidst all the fighting. But the defenders had lost even more people.

Thankfully, I could still make out my friends, and they were still alive and kicking. Sun Yun was the most noticeable as she was now being ganged up on by four of the bandits at once, with Jianfeng and a returned Lin trying to support her.

They were farther from this side of the bridge, making it impossible for me to help from here. So instead, I would need to aim for some of the enemies closer to us first. But before that, I quickly turned my attention back towards my fox. I took just a quick moment to redirect what foxfire was free after their spirit beasts died, and tagged more of the constant stream of spirit beasts on the other side of the bridge. Once that was done, and my Qi supply was guaranteed, I returned my attention to what was before me.

Scanning our opponents, I quickly focused on one of them in particular. He had the strange ogre-like appearance of that man who had been fighting Sun Yun instead of the more normal animal mix of the others. He wielded a massive hammer and fought against a group of five men, three in rough tunics and leather armor, and two in cultivator robes. The men looked familiar, and it took me a second to remember them. They were the group that had been working under Sun Xia when she’d gone to save Sun Yun.

But I didn’t have time to focus on that. Instead, I raised my left hand and aimed it right at the big ogre man. He was still quite far away, maybe 50 yards or more, but my Crystalizing Beam had a very far range. One that was made even further by just how much Qi I could put into it now. 

A bright purple beam of light shot out of my hand, headed straight towards my target. To his credit, he seemed to sense my attack and lurch to the side in an attempt to dodge. But I just followed with my hand, sweeping the beam towards the ogre man.

“Who dares!” the ogre shouted as he swept his hammer at my beam. Crystals grew on his hammer for a moment before they were blasted off as green Qi exploded from his weapon. 

The Qi started to force my beam back. I responded by surging more Qi into the already costly Skill, my reserves starting to drop despite how much Qi was still coming in. At the same time, I started to feel an odd strain in my core, but ignored it to keep pushing more Qi into my attack. 

It wasn’t enough to overwhelm the ogre man, but it didn’t need to be. After all, the ogre man wasn’t just fighting me. He was reminded of that fact when his five opponents reengaged him. Each one lashed out with their own weapons, aiming at his limbs and torso with ferocity.

“Insolence!” the ogre man screamed, and a demonic face made out of green Qi blasted out of his hammer.

The attack pushed through my beam, headed back towards me for several yards before I managed to stop it with the force of my attack. When it stopped, my purple beam began crystallizing it before it shattered into pieces. But in that brief period of time, it gave the ogre man free rein to defend himself.

He lashed out with his hammer, smashing it against a familiar older man’s burning saber. He was sent flying, a curse on his lips, but another man was able to take advantage and slip in with a spear. He stabbed it into the ogre man’s thigh, earning him a curse, but the ogre man latched onto the spear before he could retreat.

With a yank, the ogre man pulled the spear wielder towards him and swung his hammer. But as he did that, I hit him with my beam again, earning me a curse as crystal started to grow on his back. At the same time, the spear wielder’s comrade grabbed him and pulled him away from the off-balance hammer swing.

Another of the man’s companions—this one in cultivator robes—lashed out with his own glaive as the ogre-man spun to put his hammer between him and my beam. He managed to get the ogre in the stomach, but his weapon was also grabbed and kept in place. The ogre man didn’t seem to be bothered by it, as his Qi started to radiate off of him and glow on his hammer once more.

A sword stabbed out, shining with a metallic sheen, aimed right for the ogre-man’s face.

“Damn insects!” the ogre-man screamed, pulling his face away to save his eye from being stabbed. But that was enough to break his concentration and his technique with his hammer. 

My beam surged forward and started to form crystal on his weapon. At the same time, the burning saber man got close and chopped at the ogre-man’s neck. He cut deep into the thick muscular neck of the ogre-man, earning another furious roar that was cut off when the swordsmen stabbed his blade into his mouth and out the back of his skull.

Even then, the ogre man seemed to still have some fight left in him as he tried to lash out at his attackers. But distracted, injured, and outnumbered, there was only so much he could do, even with his healing factor. And things finally ended with one more chop from the saber user that took the struggling ogre-man’s head from his neck.

And just like that, a fight that had been going on for some time, locked in a stalemate, was over. I grinned viciously at the sight. One down. A couple dozen more to go. But with the five of them freed up to fight the rest, it was only going to get easier from here on out.

As long as no other surprises came about, we had this in the bag.