Chapter 277 - All Noisy On The Eastern Front (Patreon)

 I wasn't intending to write this, but I had a rough day and then heard some really intense music, so now we are here and there is tasty chapter. The ending is... mixed, I think I lightened the tone a bit much, but I also think it fits? Let me know what y'all think, and otherwise enjoy.

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War is hell.

It rings in his soul, down to his depths, swimming through every moment.

War is hell.

It’s almost as loud as his Truths, deeper than knowledge, falling more towards certainty. It’s not quite there yet, not quite as loud or as pure, but it rings nonetheless.

War is hell.

And Shin Ren is one of its devils now. 

The doors to the bunker shut behind him, and he breathes in air that should be clean. That should be pure, free of the smell of ash and death and fear and ruin… but he takes in a second breath, and the smell remains. Louder, even, if that makes sense.

Which, of course it does. It’s his smell. Baked into his clothes, tattooed to his skin.

He takes a third breath, shakier than the rest. 

A flare of his cultivation banishes the scent, the purity of clean-burning flame pushing the flavor of hell off his skin- and then he breathes it in fully, wasting not a wisp, feeding it to one of his Souls.

War is hell.

And its devils are well fed.

He exhales, and while the taste lingers, the smell is gone now. He opens his eyes, seeing the many more focused on him, and feels the Smiling Noble rise up, guiding him into a polite nod, something reassuring. It isn’t hard, really- people want to feel comforted, want to trust him, and the right changes are enough for them to take the flare of Qi as a show of force, or superiority, rather than the fearful thing it came from. He still feels like there’s ash on his skin, blood under his fingernails, but they don’t need to know that. They want a noble hero, a third-ring nobody risen to power and majesty, shaking off the dust and smiling like it’s no big deal.

So he gives it to them. They deserve at least that much. As he watches soldiers marching, most of them his age or younger, ripe with Qi and green with inexperience, he figures they deserve at least that much.

Armor of black, gold and jade marches out, the bunker door reopening to let out the newest round of reinforcements, there to kill and die. 

The Wall is dead. Long live the Wall. 

He does his best to keep the mask on as long as he needs to. He lets the Smiling Noble’s Qi rise in him, mirage-haze making the illusion all the realer, even as his cores ache for how empty he has drained them.

Choice Is Universal, he reminds himself. Even if the Choice is to let them go into the meat-grinder. Even if the Choice is to rest so he doesn’t literally burn himself alive, like he did in the first week, needing days to heal, days where he couldn’t hold the line, where more of the Core Formation cultivators in Imperial armor had to stand in his place. Even if the Choice seems like no Choice at all. 

He shakes his head, breathing deep and at last smelling the clean air, arrays and formations cycling to move in fresh, purified oxygen to the halls of the bunker.

It’s one of many, a long-prepared failsafe contingent on the collapse of part of the Wall. There is a substantial underground portion to the trench-maze that runs behind the Wall’s outer perimeter and the fortress-cities, and with air-superiority so hotly contested, they’re the best avenue for travel at the moment. Not that the subterranean is much safer, just easier to staff and defend- there are plenty of beasts, constructs and abominations that make their way under the ground as well. 

The underground railways and secured teleportation arrays make it the best option for reinforcement from cities that can spare the manpower, which have become… rarer, lately. The struggle to maintain the breach hasn’t abated, and the number of attacks all along the eastern direction have increased. There was talk of grabbing reinforcements from the west, but… well. No one wants to take a risk with the Gilded City. Might as well take from the north and hope that the cold doesn’t notice.

It hasn’t tipped the scales yet. The monsters that have made it past the perimeter line have been few and weak.

But it’s been almost three weeks now, and Shin Ren has slept… maybe four times in that period. And he has learned.

As he and his allies stood tall at the initial breach, he learned. As they were slowly pushed back, they all learned, in their own ways.

War is hell.

He lets out a breath, reaching up to his throat and the pendant hanging in the hollow.

With a chirp, its arrays activate, projecting a list of options before him like he’s holding a slate up to his face. 

The technology that the Division of War has access to is… considerable. In certain ways, it matches the complexity of the arrays he found in the Academies, but more specific. He hasn’t been back in the last few weeks, and his research has suffered for it, but even if they offered him a chance to retreat and recoup, he wouldn’t take it now.

So he contents himself with the too-advanced array and the smell of war, and clicks through a menu until he finds what he’s looking for.

There. Two identity-markers, both of them pinging close to each other.

Partially due to the mutual exhaustion they all suffered at the start of the breach, partially by Shin Ren’s request, the work-cycles of his group are mostly synchronized. Ki Hao tends to work his own hours, his ties to his sect a bit more demanding than the rest of theirs, but… well, they haven’t exactly had a chance to become close, even as fighting alongside him has given Shin Ren an appreciation for the young master.

He makes his way through the tunnels, angles sharp and perpetually grey, towards his friends. A few people bow to him as he passes, or whisper thanks or congratulations, but anyone that seems to have more business, he simply nods to and keeps walking, making clear that there will be none of that. The Smiling Noble helps a bit, but frankly, with how low on Qi they all are, it’s fairly obvious to anyone at a glance that he’s at the end of his rope.

He turns a corner and at last catches sight of his friends.

Gou Mai and Mei Yu both meet his eyes as he turns the corner, their own pendants more than capable of warning them of his approach. They look almost as tired as he feels, though Mei Yu wears it better than any of them, more draped on a couch than collapsed on it, the barest flicker of Qi highlighting her better features.

Shin Ren is fairly certain she doesn’t need it, but the effort is appreciated. 

Gou Mai, on the other hand, wears his pain openly, even as he smiles through it at the sight of Shin Ren. He is covered in bandages, heavy scripts of healing arrays repairing deep wounds and complex damage at an accelerated speed. Even without them, his robes would show clear signs of battle, leaving him half-bare, a fighter and strongman’s physique on display beneath fresh scars and new bandaging/

“And the reigning Prince of the Wall returns!” Gou Mai says, his voice strained but holding jovial nonetheless. “I would get up and bow, but the climb today has me positively peaked. Get it?”

A hairpin stabs into the wall next to his head, less than a centimeter from his skin, but he doesn’t flinch. There’s about half an outline of his head there already, and Shin Ren raises an eyebrow to Mei Yu.

“I’ve been throwing one at him every time he makes a pun. I’m ashamed to say, but I have yet to properly impale his voicebox.”

Gou Mei chuckles. “I think this honored cultivator is slowly gaining the affections of the young miss, honored brother.”

Shin Ren lets out an exhale, a quiet little breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Instead of answering, he just collapses to a seat on another couch.

It’s not a barracks, per se. Such things aren’t for Nascent Soul cultivators, even in times of war. No, this is more of a lounge, the pale grey of the tunnels at last offset by a shifting mosaic on one wall, an illusion-screen on the other, a series of comfortable lounging areas all interspaced with a table of food between them. Doors lead into individual rooms, none as lavish as the chambers of the Academies, but far from the monastic spaces that lesser soldiers “enjoy”.

Shin Ren can’t help but wonder at the waste of space and resources, at how the time and energy to make such a place could have been better served improving the tunnels as a whole instead… but here, now, he can only feel the seat beneath him, and how easy it would be to fall asleep on.

“What is it now, senior brother?” Mei Yu asks. “Another wave of the freshly-dead? Perhaps a fresh infusion of the plague of steel, making its way through a lucky few? Some fresh Divine Beast?”

He shakes his head, but… he takes a moment to answer, and he does not miss how she offers it to him freely.

“No. No, not- nothing special, I suppose. Their backline is still far too reinforced, so we couldn’t make a proper push, but it was mostly just… more of the same.”

He hears his companions sigh, both of them keeping it quiet- but neither refutes him. They’ve been on the front lines as much as he. Well… almost as much as he. Mei Yu doesn’t have the power-set that he and Gou Mai tend to focus on, and even compared to Gou Mai, Shin Ren has…

The Corpse Aflame turns and roils inside him, and he has to acknowledge it. He’s been pushing himself. Hard.

But… he can do more.

He banishes the thought of sleep. With a mixture of command and plea, he starts to move his Qi, his three Souls joining in to help him circulate, that he might regain that little bit more power and leave that little bit sooner.

“Thank you,” he says. “I… I know this has been hard. The levity is appreciated.”

Gou Mai snorts. “What do you know, even an ascetic can recognize good humor in the face of struggle.”

Shin Ren rolls his eyes. “Apparently, they can. I, the honorable Shin Ren, wouldn’t know about that, seeing as I remain not an ascetic.”

He turns at the sound Mei Yu makes, something between a giggle and a snort making it through her illusion. She raises an eyebrow at him, daring him to challenge her. “Please. At this point, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t need to apply to get into an order. They could smell the work ethic and lack of sleep rolling off you.”

He snorts himself, shaking his head. “Speaking of…”

Mei Yu and Gou Mai both give off a groan so synchronized it may well have been practiced- but they do shift, ever so slightly, sitting a bit more upright, looking at him more head-on.

“I’ve confirmed it,” Mei Yu says. “The palanquin belongs to the Fourth Blade.”

Shin Ren clenches a fist, hard, hard enough that he feels his nails dig into his palm. “...Any news about why he hasn’t moved?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing official. The word amongst the upper ranks is that he’s waiting for another Blade to arrive, guarantee the victory… but most of the chitter-chatter down below has it that he’s enjoying it. Sitting up there, watching. I’m inclined to believe the latter. As far as I can tell there are nearly no books or stories about the Fourth Blade, at least no official ones, but apparently, rumors about him have been circulating for a long time.”

“Have you heard anything about a second Blade coming?”

“Near certain,” Gou Mei says, wincing as he shifts in his seat. “I’ve heard tell that the Young Blade is on her way.”

“The Fifth?” Shin Ren asks. “Why? She may be a Blade, but-”

“Yeah, barely twenty years in the role. And still in the Nascent Soul realm, I hear. Half the Aspirants of the Cut in bunker talk about her like some kind of saint, the other half like some kind of usurper.”

Mei Yu shrugs a shoulder, the movement artful even with the hitch of bruising that interrupts it. “Not a clue. Frankly, I’m still not sure why the Fourth doesn’t deal with it himself. Most of the military records I’ve managed to scrounge mark conflicts where he shows up as “resolved”, no details. If he’s that scary…”

“Wouldn’t be any point if he resolved it,” Shin Ren says, his voice quiet. “Wouldn’t get any use out of it.”

Gou Mai quirks an eyebrow, but Shin Ren ignores him, standing instead. Suddenly, the cushion feels wrong, the ground under his feet… off.

“It’s a test,” he says, his voice ice cold for the heat it holds. “Or training, maybe. One Blade could solve it, but then the Young Blade wouldn’t get shown off, or practice her skills, or something.”

Mei Yu sits upright, standing to approach him- but slowly. He realizes belatedly that he’s begun to emit a bit of heat, and does his best to pull it back, even as his hands are almost trembling with tension.

“...that’s a big leap, senior brother,” she says, her voice careful. “We’ve been fighting constantly. Sometimes the mind can-”

“Think about it. There’s a breach in the Wall. We’re losing thousands by the day, and every day this goes on, the chances that a Beast or one of the plagues out there advances or slips past us into the third ring. But it’s been weeks, and none of the Generals have traveled out here. A Blade’s been sitting up there for weeks doing nothing. The Emperor hasn’t waved its hand and wiped out the breach wholesale. Maybe one of those things, maybe two, I could see as the balance being worse than the official word would say, but all of them? It’s been centuries since a breach, and no one with any real power has done anything to close it.

“And now, apparently, the youngest of all the Blades is on her way. If it were the second or the fourth, then sure, I could see it being an issue of needing someone to really wipe something out, but the youngest? She’s got, what, the one legend?”

Mei Yu scoffs, then seems to regret it by the look on Shin Ren’s face. “I- I mean, the sects don’t allow that sort of thing. It’s-”

She pauses, as if hearing her own words. A hand comes up to her face, holding her chin as she starts to mutter to herself. “No, that’s- as far as politicking goes, I suppose-”

Shin Ren turns to look at Gou Mai, who just… shrugs.

“If you say it, I believe you, honored brother,” he says. For the moment, his smile has left, and without it, his face looks… tired. Almost haggard. “My sect has sent some of my junior brothers to assist, but there’s been no real mobilization. Some pressure from the big six, perhaps, but nothing like a real push, at least none that my master has told me of.”

Shin Ren points at him, stopping and strangling his cultivation back as another burst of heat threatens to come up. “Exactly. Exactly. It’s- maybe it’s just not enough pressure, maybe the elders aren’t worried until the breach is years old enough for them to take it seriously, but that can’t be it.

“They’re using this. This is- it’s an opportunity for something.”

He feels a bit of blood run from his palms, the smell of ash and ruin thick in his throat.

“The Blades… the sects… maybe the Empire. It’s just… not that big a deal.”

He hears someone hiss as a hand touches his shoulder, and he blinks, shocked out of the heat he’s been emitting.

Mei Yu gives him a look- and then dissipates the illusory hand, quirking an eyebrow as he looks confusedly at his shoulder.

“Breathe, Ren. Breathe.”

He tries.

It takes a few attempts.

In. Out. In. Out.

He breathes deep. Calms himself. Feels himself quiet, heat of his cultivation once again wrapped tighter to his cores- even as the Corpse Aflame grumbles, frustrated at the lack of burning.

But he still tastes the ashes.

“You all should really invest in some sound-proofing arrays. The ones in here are just… terrible.”

Shin Ren, Mei Yu and Gou Mai all turn, exhausted cultivations rising. The room briefly trembles at the sheer weight of their combined force, weeks of war keeping them painfully on edge, ready to snap-

And all three of them stop at the appearance of the woman standing against the doorway.

Mei Yu recovers first, but Shin Ren is the first to speak.

“You. Are we still calling you 'Wyld', then?”

The felinid beastkin bows, ever so slightly, one arm sweeping out sardonically. “The same. It’s good to be remembered- I know you’ve had a stressful month or two since we last met.”

Shin Ren feels a sudden surge of something to his side, and shoots a glance at Mei Yu- who is smiling politely, visually unbothered.

“Senior brother,” she says, stepping just a bit closer to him, “who might this be? Might introductions be in order?”

Some unspoken communication seems to flash between the two women, and Gou Mai chuckles to one side- before shutting up fast as Mei Yu flicks a glance at him.

“I- this is-”

“No need, no need,” Wyld / Maen says, sashaying into the room. She stands out from the grey, dressed entirely in midnight black with hair and fur to match, a long, sinuous tail coiled behind her and feline ears twitching atop her head. “You may call me Wyld. I, and the one I represent, suggested that your friend take this job. You surprised us by sticking around, but what a lovely surprise it was, to find such sentiment awaiting me. Here I was, thinking I’d have to convince you of the mess of it all, while you’re laying it all out.”

“What do you want?” Shin Ren asks, his voice hard.

Wyld raises her hands. “No need for that. I’m not the one letting all those kids die out there, or the one sitting above it all. I’m here as an act of goodwill. Wasn’t easy getting on-base.”

“What do you want, Wyld?”

She sighs, dropping her hands, leaning against the wall again. “Fine. No pleasantries. I want to offer a bit of cooperation. I think that-”

A polite knock on the door, and before anyone can tell the intruder to leave, it opens, letting in a nondescript man holding a letter.

“Letter for- oh, shit. Maen?”

Wyld- no, Maen now- turns to the stranger, eyes wide, her claws glowing with Predation and Nature- and pauses.

“Nera?”

They both start to talk at once, and, the tension only partially diffused, and-

Gou Mai makes a noise that might best be described as a hippopotamus very unwillingly rolling over.

“For fucks sake, people! I can’t rest but five minutes without some kind of esoteric, world-altering type event landing on us. You’re lucky I’m such a trusting fellow, Shin Ren, or I’d start to question if you’re really a monastic ascetic as you claim.”

Shin Ren sighs.

The joke helps, silencing the noise, cutting into the tension, but...

It’s been a long day.

He tastes ashes on his tongue.

He breathes in.

“You. Hand me the letter. You. Tell me what you're offering."