He Yu sat down on a log that had been an ancient tree just that morning. The medicine he’d taken coursed through his meridians, restoring his dwindling qi reserves. The fighting had been going on for hours. Even so, a red sun hung just over the mountains to the west, casting the world in perpetual twilight. The column of red light still pierced the sky. The tide of spirits and beasts showed no signs of slowing.

  For the third time that day, the countless little cuts and bruises and more serious injuries He Yu had taken in his defense of the sect began to close up. Along with Li Heng and Tan Xiaoling, he’d been rotated out of the front line. The attacking horde consisted almost entirely of Fourth Realm beasts, and Fifth Realms were growing more common by the hour. The two reserve groups, those disciples ranked under two hundred, had long since been sent to relieve the flagging defenders.

  That wasn’t to mean the fight was over for He Yu. Instead, he’d been instructed to step back, take pills and receive treatment as necessary. Then get back into the fight. At least the reinforcements were almost exclusively late or peak Golden Cores. Among the top fifty, there were even a handful of Nascent Souls. The sect’s strategy, it seemed, mirrored their opponents.

  “What happens when the Sixth and Seventh Realms arrive?” He Yu asked, not intending to say it aloud. He was too tired to care once it was out.

  “The elders will step in, I’d hope,” Li Heng said. He was just as haggard as He Yu was. His robes torn in a dozen different places, and his crown hairpin had long since been banished to his storage treasure. He now wore his hair in a warrior’s bun, similar to how He Yu typically wore his. Fatigue showed plainly on his face and he held his jian with limp fingers, not even bothering to stow it away as he sat next to He Yu as they rested.

  On the opposite side of Li Heng, Tan Xiaoling looked little better. At some point she’d torn the sleeves off her own gown, and her arms bore the marks of countless claws and teeth and horns. Even now, the wounds closed up as she cycled her own medicine. She’d found a scrap of cloth—perhaps once part of her gown—that she’d used to tie her hair back. Vanity, it seemed, was entirely off the table.

  “I wonder how Chen Fei and Yan Shirong are doing?” He Yu asked.

  “I should think Chen Fei is well enough,” Tan Xiaoling said. “She’s tougher than she looks.”

  He Yu couldn’t decide if Tan Xiaoling meant physically or mentally. After a moment, he decided it was the latter. Chen Fei’s ability to shrug off tremendous blows had become somewhat of a talking point among the inner disciples over the last year. While there were still plenty of whispers calling her a barbarian, nobody dared say it where she could hear anymore.

  “I wouldn’t put it past Yan Shirong to have an escape talisman, at the very least,” Li Heng said. “Both of them should be fine.”

  It was reassuring to hear. Especially as He Yu looked up to see a low Fourth Realm disciple being dragged away from the front lines by a sect healer. Sights like that had become more frequent as the fight wore on. By now, nobody could deny this was a battle of attrition. The sect may have had many inner disciples and resources at its disposal, but those disciples and resources were still limited. The enemy was all but endless.

  With his injuries and cultivation base restored for the time being, He Yu stood. “We should get back into it.”

  The others wordlessly joined him as they returned to their grim task. They took their places on the front lines, and another trio of disciples moved back to take their turns resting and restoring themselves. Within moments, He Yu was back in that strange in-between place of detachment and focus as his Wayborn Seed eased his movements and techniques in the endless battle for the Shrouded Peaks.

  Several hundred feet below, Wei Hua moved through the valley. Everywhere he walked, spires of stone erupted from the valley floor and slopes to pierce or pummel his foes. Giant slabs of ice formed, only to crash down on the Fifth Realm beasts he held back from reaching the Golden Cores at the top of the slope. He’d been at it for hours.

  From atop a nearby mountain, Zhang Lifen rained hundreds of arrows upon the horde every second. She would loose a single shot of gleaming water qi that would split into nine, then another nine. The resulting mass of arrows would all curve unnaturally towards their marks, felling nearly a hundred with each attack she released. The second arrow would leap off her bow before the first volley had made it halfway to their marks. Her arms were a blur as she released shot after shot, covering the sky with her rain of death.

  Another hour passed. Then another. He Yu’s arms ached. His legs ached. The feeling of emptiness in his core was sharper and more pronounced than he’d ever felt it before. His meridians strained with each activation of his techniques. Through it all, he continued to kill.

  It was, in its own odd way, the one thing that benefited the defenders. While the lives of spirits and beasts carried less weight than the life of a human, especially a fellow cultivator, a death was still a death. The fight wore on, and He Yu noticed a sharpening, a refinement, of his killing intent.

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  His techniques took on a weight they’d never had before. The storm of his spirit became ever more dangerous. His techniques more deadly. Li Heng’s killing intent similarly developed. Only Tan Xiaoling’s killing intent didn’t show the same rapid increase, but hers had already been so finely honed, He Yu didn’t think much of it. A horde of beasts could only do so much for her.

  Still, the struggle dragged on.

  Another hour passed, and a shout rose from where Wei Hua fought. “Disciples, fall back!”

  Despite the fatigue, despite the endless tide pressing against them, the disciples obeyed. They fought as they retreated, ceding ground to the oncoming wave. Bit by bit, the flow of beasts slowed. When they’d almost fully abandoned their defensive position, He Yu took the chance to peer down the valley. Wei Hua held back the horde mostly by himself. He had support from Zhang Lifen, who was still perched on the nearby peak, but he was the only one on the ground. A moment later, He Yu saw why.

  Two beasts—bears with stone claws and rigid rocky growths along their backs—lumbered up the valley. They were both in the Sixth Realm. Behind them, a Seventh Realm Golden Tiger bounded towards the lone Fifth Realm core disciple, its eyes twin pools of molten gold. He Yu’s worst fears for the battle finally showed themselves.

  Wei Hua stomped his foot. A wall of ice and stone erupted from the ground, blocking passage up the valley. With a single step, he appeared at the top of the valley. “Back!” he shouted.

  He Yu couldn’t react in time. Everything happened at once. A presence that He Yu had only caught the smallest glimpse of descended upon the valley. This time, it was unrestrained, heedless of what it crushed beneath it. The valley and the mountains erupted with growth, with life. He Yu fell to his hands and knees, spitting up a mouthful of blood.

  Elder Wen Xi, the instructor for the outer disciples’ cultivation lesson during He Yu’s first year in the sect, stood atop a broad leaf. Floating a hundred feet above the valley floor, he glared down at the Sixth and Seventh realm beasts below with his hands folded within his sleeves.

  Trees stretching a hundred feet into the air grew in an instant. Moss and vines choked the land and the beasts. A surging of wood and life qi crashed over the disciples at the top of the valley. A tree erupted from the ground, carrying one bear along in its branches. Vines crept up the trunk to wrap around the struggling bear and choke the very life from its throat. The second bear stumbled. A thick tangle of brambles sprang up around it. Thorns pierced its fur, then its skin. Each drop of blood the bear shed, the brambles drank in. Life overcame life, and the beast was consumed.

  The Seventh Realm tiger bounded through the explosion of undergrowth. The rapidly growing primordial forest soon became too much. Its roars increased in fury, even as He Yu lost sight of it among the trees and moss and vines. Then it was silent. Silent except for the cracking of stone as the forest continued to grow, to reshape the land for as far as He Yu could see.

  Then, relief. The oppressive weight of a single sect elder’s spirit ceased to press down upon him. When He Yu looked up, he saw why. Sitting in the branches of a nearby and newly grown tree was Su Meifeng. Her presence, the same aspects of wood and life as Elden Wen but more protective in its nature, had expanded to cover all those disciples still at the top of the valley. She plucked her ruan, and a barrier formed over them all. Her music continued, and healing life-aspected qi washed over the exhausted Golden Cores.

  He Yu flopped over onto his back and stared at the red sky. From within the branches of her tree, Su Meifeng gave a soft laugh.

  “The fight is far from over, Junior Brother He. I am glad, however, to see that you yet live. Not all our disciples were so lucky. I am afraid you may have increased your rank over the course of the day.”

  It was a bitter thing to hear. Logically speaking, it was obvious that not everyone would survive a fight like this. Especially those in the middle and lower tiers of the sect’s combat strength, like He Yu. It hadn’t been something he’d time to think about, though. Not while fighting for his life.

  “How is the battle not over?” he asked. “I would assume that someone as powerful as a sect elder could deal with the rest of the horde alone.”

  “You are correct. Master Wen will hold the west,” Su Meifeng said. Given the feeling of her qi, it made sense that she would be Elder Wen’s martial daughter. “The inner sect and the greater portion of the core disciples will defend against the cultivators that approach from the east and the north.”

  He Yu sat up. “Cultivators approaching from the east and north?” he asked. Although he had a good idea of what that meant, he hoped he was wrong.

  Su Meifeng’s features were grim despite the peaceful music coming from her ruan. “The Sunset Court. I suspect they waited so they could coordinate with one another. Whether Jin Xifeng herself is directing them, I couldn’t say. They’re far fewer in number than the beasts here, but there’s enough of them such that we need the disciples to aid in the defense.”

  “Waited? For how long?” He Yu asked.

  “By my count, it’s been three days since the empress first pierced the sky,” Su Meifeng said.

  He Yu stood and saluted Su Meifeng. “This disciple thanks Senior Sister for her aid.”

  She inclined her head and gave him a ghost of a smile. “Take care, Junior Brother He. See the medicine hall disciples on your way. They’ll give you some elixirs to replenish the resources you’ve expended defending the sect.”

  He Yu headed to where the sect healers had set up their field hospital, along with Li Heng and Tan Xiaoling. The three of them then followed the instructions that Ren Huang bellowed from atop a nearby pavilion and headed toward the outer sect mountain.

  “It’s odd that the court still has enough strength to attack the sect after the year-long campaign we’ve been waging against them,” Li Heng said. “I wonder how many there are?”

  “I’m more worried about the why,” He Yu said. He kept returning to how wasteful this whole thing was. Unless the court had experts of the Eighth Realm, surely they had to know there was no chance of victory against the entire Shrouded Peaks Sect arrayed for war? Even if they only had a single expert at the Divine Soul Apotheosis stage, all six of the sect elders were of the Eighth Realm as well. Sect Leader Zhou Shanyuan and the First Elder Cai Weizhe were both at the peak.

  Although He Yu had no direct experience with the Sunset Empress Jin Xifeng, he couldn’t imagine why she’d simply throw away her followers’ lives. To him, it went against the covetous nature that so infused everything her spirit touched.

  As He Yu made his way to the next battle, he turned the problem over in his head, certain he was missing something.

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