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Chapter 144 – Razor’s Edge
🕑 Added 2024-11-25 12:45:01 +0000 UTC11/25/24 A/N: I'm on vacation this week. I didn't anticipate that impacting my release times, but I posted this chapter and the last a little later than intended. I'm hoping to return to my normal practice of releasing the night before for the rest of the week, but I may be a little late as circumstances dictate. Thanks in advance for your understanding!
Kang Lin was more than a little nervous about jumping over the wall and into the fray. Her last battle hadn’t gone very well. Sure, she’d survived without any serious injuries, but she hadn’t done much damage to the beasts, either.
Master had poured so many resources into her—a pill to ease her advancement; a new cultivation method tailored specifically to her qi aspect; two techniques, one for launching bolts of lightning from her spear and one ridiculous shield technique that, once mastered, would automatically respond to threats, that were both also attuned perfectly to her qi aspect; and a new weapon better in quality than most sect scions received from their families. To repay his generosity, she needed to excel. Instead, she barely held her own for a few minutes before having to retreat.
She needed to do better.
In an attempt to steel her nerves, she told herself that she was facing only a mere five beasts instead of a hundred. Five was doable. Much better than one hundred. She had, after all, faced a much greater quantity and emerged relatively unscathed.
Right?
Of course, there was just her and two others. Three total. Versus five. So she and her allies were outnumbered.
And of course, the beasts were all rank five, which equated to between minor realm four and minor realm six of Foundation Establishment. She was only in the first minor realm and had only recently achieved even that much. Both her techniques were barely at Small Success.
The twins were in the same situation.
She was about to face five spirit beasts that all significantly outranked and outnumbered her team. Were they crazy?
Last time, she’d felt almost no fear about going against a teeming mass of beasts. Sure, they didn’t outrank her by nearly as much, but there were so many more of them.
Overall, it had been objectively a more dangerous situation.
The difference was that she had supreme confidence that her unfathomable master would not let any true harm come to her.
Master left, though, taking his overpowered attacks and instant healing with him.
Kang Lin took a deep breath. Trust had to extend beyond knowing that he’d save her if she got in over her head. She needed to believe he had a reason for leaving those five beasts for her and the twins to fight. After all, he could have easily just killed all of them. There must be a reason he left those five standing.
“Yang Ru, left,” Yang Xiu yelled. “Kang Lin, focus on the hyena.”
Kang Lin glanced back and saw that Yang Ru had already started his charge. She needed to get moving. With a flex of her powerful Foundation Establishment leg muscles, she jumped onto the allure.
The hyena was already blinded by ice qi. She made ready to jump down and stab it in the process of landing.
The other beasts were too close to it, though. She’d be overwhelmed by them as soon as her feet touched the ground. Maybe sooner.
“Keep the others off me,” she yelled to Yang Xiu.
Kang Lin hopped over the parapet, trusting her friend to do what was needed.
The hyena’s right eye was already clearing. It smirked at her, making her want to wipe that horrible, smug expression off its face.
In contrast to the technique her grandfather had given her, learning the one Master had granted was easy, and the strength of the qi it converted into lightning was magnitudes better than she had expected.
The difference between heaven grade and profound was truly unfathomable.
Between the ease of learning the technique and the practice she’d put in, Kang Lin had no trouble charging her spear as she fell.
The beast seemed unconcerned, watching her with that awful expression like she was a lamb heading to the slaughter.
She hoped that it didn’t know something she didn’t.
Regardless, it was too late to change tacks. She was committed.
Predictably, the hyena tried to snap at her with its enormously strong jaws, but she easily twisted away from it. Ignoring the distraction, she kept her spear on target, stabbing the center of the beast’s forehead.
Lightning burst from the metal tip.
As Kang Lin gained her footing, the hyena recoiled, whimpering. There was a black mark on its head.
Her attack had done more damage than expected.
Water. The hyena’s qi aspect was water, which was weak to her lightning.
Yes! Finally, she could prove her worth.
“I’ll kill this one. Keep the others off me!” she yelled.
###
Yang Xiu surveyed the battlefield. One beast, the zebra, was down and out. Kang Lin had the hyena well in hand. It wouldn’t last another minute as the Poison Claw Sect member rained lightning on it from quick thrusts from her spear.
That left the dog, the turtle, and the salamander.
Of the three, the dog, a large breed that didn’t look familiar to her, suffered much more from her arrows than the other two. Yang Xiu guessed it was fire qi aspected, weak to her ice.
Part of her wanted to concentrate on it to bring it down, but while it would feel nice to actually kill a beast on her own, that wasn’t the smart choice at the moment. She needed to keep the beasts off her teammates, especially Kang Lin who had refused Body Cultivation on the basis of not having enough contribution points to pay for all the cores herself.
Yang Xiu thought she understood at least the basis of what Master wanted them to do. The hyena, zebra, and dog had qi aspects that were weak to attacks from one of the defenders. The salamander and turtle were tough but slow. Kill the three with weaknesses and team up against the remaining beasts.
It wouldn’t be easy, and any mistake could lead to tragedy. The path was there, though.
“Yang Ru, retreat to rebuild your momentum. Attack the salamander.”
He grunted in reply, already beginning to sprint away from the battle. With her peppering the eyes of the other three beasts with arrows, none of them followed him.
Perfect.
For the next minute, she alternated shots between the beasts other than the hyena, and Kang Lin finished that one off.
“Engage the turtle!” Yang Xiu yelled.
Her brother was already charging the salamander. His ability was interesting, the exact opposite of hers. The complement of hers, really. Instead of many fast but underwhelming—distracting—blows, he could deliver a massive amount of energy in an instant. That instant took much preparation, however.
He’d been almost worthless while overwhelmed with so many beasts, but then again, they all had been. The current battle gave all of them a chance to shine.
With him approaching the amphibian and Kang Lin engaging the shelled tank, Yang Xiu could finally focus on the dog.
When she’d been a mere Qi Gathering cultivator attacking rank four spirit beasts and above, her arrows had done literally no damage at all. All physical force created by the impact had been absorbed by the creatures’ qi shields.
By coating the tips in qi, she was able to deliver force through both physical means and aspected qi. The arrows still didn’t deal devastating damage, but the offensive qi overwhelmed the shield enough to allow some actual injury to the beast.
Using an offensive aspect that was strong against the shield magnified the amount of force getting through by somewhere between one and a half to two times, depending on a lot of factors that Master had a hard time simplifying enough for her to understand.
The result was the important thing, though, not the way that it was achieved. For each shot, the dog received extra damage.
Not much. No single blow was ruinous for the beast. But where the other two beasts found the arrows’ impacts irritating, the dog flinched.
Previously, the canine had only received two shots out of every six, four total. Two on each eye.
With the extra damage, the beast had been blinded, leaving it unable to even attempt to dodge. Not that its previous efforts in that regard had done much good. Her arrows were too fast as they slipped through the air.
Since she was released to solely engage the dog, arrow after arrow hit it in the same spot on its head, and each did a little bit more damage, carving away first fur, then skin, then muscle, then bone.
Shot after shot rained down on it until, finally, the last thin layer of bone was destroyed, and an arrow tip reached brain matter.
Her target killed, Yang Xiu returned her attention to the rest of the fight. The salamander was dead. Only one beast, the turtle, remained alive. Kang Lin occupied it, neither doing it much damage nor taking blows herself.
Yang Ru was again retreating so as to build up momentum for another strike.
Yang Xiu hesitated before shooting her next arrow. A normal fight would soon be over as her brother would soon deliver a cataclysmic blow against the beast, killing it with one shot.
Turtles, however, were known to be defensive specialists. Yang Xiu didn’t expect it to fall quite so easily.
Master could have killed it easily, though. Why leave that particular beast for them?
The answer came swiftly—the target was a defensive whetstone to sharpen their attacks.
“Killing the beast doesn’t matter!” she yelled. “Focus on making your attacks stronger.”
Putting into action her thoughts, she concentrated on each step of her process of loosing an arrow. At some point, she was sure that she would be able to improve the purely mechanical aspects of archery, but that technique was already mastered. The important part was in applying qi to her arrow.
Or was it?
Her practice had been focused on increasing both the speed of applying qi and how much of the arrow was coated. Both facets were coming along nicely. Her rate of fire wasn’t quite as fast as prior to learning the Slippery Arrow technique, but it was close. And she’d recently started coating the entire shaft with ice qi.
She needed her arrows to be even faster, to pack more of a punch. Improving how quickly she could apply the qi before loosing would be a benefit, but it wouldn’t enhance the power of each arrow.
There had to be a way to make it do more damage.
Master continually emphasized that her qi was what she believed it to be. Perfectly smooth ice balanced on the razor edge of freezing and thawing were the exact words he’d used to describe it.
Smooth. Slippery. Fast. She’d already incorporated all those ideas into her technique.
What else?
Balance? No.
Wait. Razor edge.
Ice could be sharp.
Fast, razor sharp ice would do more damage than fast blunt ice, right?
Could it really be that simple?
Her qi was what she believed it to be. If she believed it to be sharp and slippery, it would be sharp and slippery.
She just needed to be absolutely confident, and if there was one thing she was absolutely confident in, it was Master. He’d led her to the realization about her qi aspect, so it must be true.
Yang Xiu loosed her arrow, and she felt the difference. The tip cut through the air even better, making it faster. Even better, when it impacted the turtle, the razor edge penetrated the beast’s qi shield easier.
Yes!
Comments
Daoist_Matt
TFTC!!! 🥳🥳 I’m on vacation too! (First day!) Hope you enjoy yours!
