Chapter 283 - Let Loose The Best Bros Of War! (Patreon)

Told you it'd be goofier! hehehe. Not much, but they are best bros, and they are at war, soooo...

Anyways! One more Shin Ren chapter, just to keep the happenings of the Empire-side of things interesting and progressing, and then we're back to the 4th ring. Shin Ren's gonna meet someone important, and we'll get to see what exactly Taurus asked him to do~

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Shin Ren awakens, and feels the knowledge of an impossible dream flow back into his mind.

How, exactly, he was transported to that strange room, he doesn’t know, but looking around himself, he sees the improvised barracks in the depths of the trenches and remembers where he is.

The breach has gotten worse.

More and more, spirit beasts are matched by strange constructs, undead and alien, and the ongoing damage has kept the Division of War from properly maintaining the structures of the Wall. It has yet to properly expand, but there are more and more pushes against other fortress cities now, and the number of discarded Daemon-constructs has multiplied, becoming a hazard of more than one battlefield. For every enemy slain, another manages to sneak past the barriers, and the third ring has gradually grown more unstable as all but the largest of its cities is threatened by the increasing numbers of spirit beasts.

And for weeks, the Empire has done nothing.

The Fourth Blade lounges atop the battlefield, seeming unbothered by the constant slaughter and content to sit and do nothing. The Fifth Blade, for all the talk of her imminent arrival, has not been swift in her travels, or maybe hasn’t even left yet. Of the other Blades, nothing is heard, but none of the Empire’s Generals has moved to support the breach, and for most, life goes on as normal.

For Shin Ren, normal has become a thing of violence.

He wakes, and with one hand shoves open the flap of fabric standing in for a door. There are better chambers available, but they’re far from the front lines (which, in truth, are a bit behind Shin Ren at this point). The door broke a week ago when something slithered through the marble like water and tried to drink his eyes, and he hasn’t had time to replace them.

Outside the door, in what should be an underground part of the trench-system that interlaces all fortress-cities from behind, the sun shines brightly on a landscape of grey and brown.

Dust rules the horizon, stone being crafted, formed, destroyed, and rebuilt almost as fast as one can see. Shin Ren sees something like a serpent made out of canine legs scaling one of the fortress cities on the horizon, a pack of birds that flap with insect wings and floating shards of dream-glass supporting its efforts. In front of him, crawling in rivers around his section of the trenches, endless constructs of bone and withered flesh sprint madly at the Empire’s defenders, repurposed dead made into formidable cannon-fodder. The sky above crackles with multi-hued lightning, Dao intermingled and flashing through the midday sunlight as a cloud made of stone and reflective metals tries its best to murder a Warrior-realm Commander, his armor flashing with arrays as he is kept on a constant backfoot despite his cultivation.

Another morning in the new normal.

Shin Ren summons his comms-tablet from his spatial ring, ringing Gou Mai’s tablet without bothering to look at his hands as he does.

It takes a few moments of blinking before a face appears, grinning wide. “Good morning, my darling brother in arms! Tell me, have you slept well, out there in the madness?”

“Of jade beauties and well-cooked pheasant,” Shin Ren replies, his smile tired but honest. “It would seem that war has done some good for my ascetic’s demeanor.”

“Perhaps it has! Tell me, where do we march to today?”

“You tell me, honored brother. I’ve only just woken up.”

“For shame! Just because you are no longer an ascetic is no excuse to laze about, Ren! There is ever so much work to do! There’s tales of a new Divine Beast approaching the breach, apparently supported by a swarm-type, a squadron of Daemons was left uncontrolled after their operators were assassinated in the night and are running wild… what else, what else… oh! There are three missions for a forward push into the breach, two from the Eternal Flame sect, one from the Blessed Clouds sect, both with handsome rewards for spirit beast cores… hmm.”

“Any news about the sands?”

“Ah! As always, brother, your mind dances ahead of the common man! Yes, there is a chance for a sandstorm later this week, but nothing confirmed. We have yet to really take back territory from the last storm, so anyone who volunteers for sand-duty is getting paid in Qi stones this cycle. Qi stones! Imagine the luxury of it all.”

“Sounds good. We’ll go there.”

There is a pause, and then Gou Ren grins wide. “You almost had me there. Here I was thinking that you’d lost your way, but I suppose advancement is your only mistress, hmm? Much to the chagrin of poor lady Mei Yu…”

Shin Ren laughs at that. “As if you haven’t already convinced her of your worthiness.”

“In battle perhaps, brother, but in love, her eye holds only you! Though not for lack of trying. If I’d known she was going to make me think my hair was made of snakes, I would have gotten her better flowers than the poor examples which surely hurt her heart!”

Shin Ren feels the air around him quiver, and dashes to one side, his cultivation propelling him with ignition away from where he stood.

The air collapses to a single point, compressing a domain of a few dozen feet into a marble of trapped air and debris. The sensation of air-pressure manifest again, and then a dozen more times all around him, and he crouches, ready to engage.

“Apologies, brother, but it seems I have company.”

He dashes forward, into the breach, the space behind him collapsing a dozen times over.

His tablet vanishes back into his storage ring and his Guandao emerges, twirling and eagerly drinking in his Qi. The spine of its blade glows as if molten, and he swings it towards an invisible enemy. 

Out of the edge of his swing, he sends forth a Cut.

The world divides around his blade, perspective forcing it into two Divided shapes, and a spurt of blood comes out from behind a block of stone sliced nearly in half, followed by a chittering shriek.

Shin Ren takes a single step, and ignition, heat, propulsion and more all send him rocketing forward- only for a burst of the same to force his momentum to a perfect stop right over the sound of the cry.

There, beneath the rocks, three insectile beastkin stare up at him, their eyes strange and reflecting the glow of his cultivation. One of them is missing an arm and part of its face, severed so cleanly that the exoskeleton doesn’t even seem broken- the other two are whole, and their cultivation rises, throwing strange impressions and that same compression technique up at him.

He does not give them a chance to attack again. With one hand, he lets loose his Qi, without bothering with a clear technique. He doesn’t need it here. A burst of pure heat, bereft of any Flame, fills the debris-widden trench they crouch in- and all of them come alight, the ground melting, the space around them warping with heat haze.

They don’t suffer. You don’t feel pain when your brain is flash-boiled in under a second.

Landing a few steps away from the heat, he re-summons his tablet.

“Sorry about that, Gou Mai. I’m back. Is there-”

Again, the space warps around him.

This time, he’s not fast enough. His speed isn’t the issue, nor are his senses- it’s simply that the space is almost ten times wider than it was last time.

Shin Ren pushes his cultivation out like a shield, his relative lack of defensive techniques meaning that his best chance is to destabilize the attack rather than try to tank it. It’s not just compression- the technique feels like an implosion, the world collapsing into a singular point of pressure. The heat and Flame he exudes helps, but not enough- there’s no direct competition, and the technique is refined, standing up to the amount of Qi he’s shoving into the air around him.

The he feels air and dust and stone pressing against his skin, sharp-edged by way of the amount of pressure and velocity they have-

There.

He can barely move, but he forces Qi through his arm, tilts the angle just right, and Cuts again.

This Cut is miniscule, barely an inch wide from his perspective- but across the battlefield, a six-foot trench is carved into the world, shattering the ground beneath a half-hidden cultivator seemingly identical to the ones he just killed.

The ground collapses, and the enemy cultivator leaps above the damage- but it’s enough of a distraction that Ren can push his Qi out, an explosion of five-hued Flame warping the world with its weight and glassing both the ground around him and the technique arrayed against him.

He turns, his nose and eyes bleeding, his clothes torn by debris, to track the beastkin. The many beastkin. Somehow still avoiding his Qi senses, almost a hundred more identical insectile beastkin emerge from out of the debris, dug into the ground and through solid stone- and they all rush in towards each other. As they touch, they seem to literally mold together, the effect like that of a spatial ring absorbing something and equally headache inducing- and then they appear to his senses.

Separately, each beastkin feels miniscule, calling on the energy of the whole to generate their techniques. Fused together, collapsing from a hundred to twenty to five and to one, they exude a sense of pressure that nears the peak of the Nascent Soul realm.

Space for a hundred meters around quivers, about to collapse inwards-

Like a thunderclap, or a falling star impacting the earth, a man clad in light blue lands and craters the earth, his blade cleanly severing the beastkin in half lengthwise.

“Hah! You owe me a round, brother!”

Gou Mai grins, his cultivation shining like a pillar and the sky beyond it. A flick of his wrist is all it takes for the blood to vanish from his blade, even as the Qi of the beastkin cultivator floods out and begins collapsing random pockets of pressure all around them. Uncoordinated, it’s easy enough to brush aside the wild Qi, and Gou Mai marches across the battlefield proudly, clad in sandals and his sect robes. A mountain of a man, tall and wide and boisterous, yet physically stronger than most cultivators Shin Ren knows, he comes off as a friendly uncle or a drinking buddy as much as he does a truly might warrior.

Shin Ren senses the weight of Qi rolling off of him- nearing the peak of Nascent Soul.

“For my life, I’d gladly pay that price,” Shin Ren says, smiling. “Your sense of timing is ever impeccable.”

“Ah, you had it handled, I’m sure. I can’t measure up to you and your training! I’m afraid I have only my own climb to measure myself by.”

“As we all should. How did you find me?”

Gou Mai shrugs. “ I looked for whatever place had a dangerous opponent and a weird little campfire nearby. After that, it was easy to simply leap off and onto your would-be opponent.”

Shin Ren looks up, confirming- there is nothing to “leap off” of above them. 

“Your techniques are improving.”

“Ah, well… we are getting quite a bit of practice, are we not?”

Shin Ren sighs, long and slow. “That we are, brother.”

Gou Mai shakes off the grimness, smiling wide at the moniker as he always does. “None of this sourness, then! My honored brother acknowledges me, so he must acknowledge my wisdom when I say that there is much to do, and no time for misery, hmm?”

“No, Gou Mai, no time for misery. Come on- I’m off to the breach. I’m going to try and glass as much of the sand as possible, and I’d appreciate a friend there to watch my back.”

“Of course- but I should think there’ll be no need for it soon enough! I got the news as I was heading over- the Fifth Blade is on her way! A few weeks late, perhaps, but it seems like at last our betters are doing what they can to assist us, hmm?”

“I- where? When?”

Gou Mai shrugs. “I saw her to the north while I was climbing. I figure she’ll be here in a few hours.”

“All the more reason to be at the frontlines. Come on- we need to meet her.”

“Oh? Is sister Mei Yu going to be jealous?”

“Good idea- call her, please. My tablet was damaged in the fight, it’ll be a bit before it recovers. She’ll be invaluable there.”

“Ah! I see! My brother has abandoned asceticism and has grown bold! Far be it from me to stop you from aiming too high, but perhaps better to aim at only one target at a time, hmm?”

“Gou Mai-”

“I’m calling, I’m calling!”

“Good. I have some questions I need to ask.”