Depthless Hunger-Chapters 453-456

Chapter 453: The Truth of the Loam

As much as Omilaena wanted to belt out the truth, this was big enough that spreading it wildly could be a problem. Based on the dead cultivators and the way the Krysali were all hustling, she surmised that Zin Nim's position must have been attacked and they needed to retreat. Which was fine, but it meant obnoxious people moving everywhere and privacy was at a premium. Eventually Kai got a flying sword large enough to fit them all and they piled on to fly separately. Though Omilaena might want to tease about the proximity, her thoughts were too important for that, so she just forced them out.

"The Loam of the Gods is fucked."

Both of them stared at her and she tried to think about how to order everything. Eventually Kai bumped his hip against hers. "Give us more than that."

"Maybe it was able to magically grow plants in an instant once, but not anymore." Omilaena ran her hands through her hair, trying to think about which of her tests would mean the most to them. "The soil is dead. Like if you planted the same crop over and over again until nothing was left but sand, spiritually. It's actually worse than normal soil."

Up to that point, Zin Nim had been strangely out of touch, but now she looked up skeptically. "Are you sure that was the real Loam?"

"Like if all this was just for a decoy? Nu-uh-uh." Omilaena waved aside the possibility. "There were ancient buildings there and relics of past harvests, I can show you later. But everything recent is in disrepair, and the dead soil is distinctly different. I think this is just like Irun: they had something of immense power until it ran out."

"But the Verdant River sect has been ascendant..."

"More importantly," Kai said quietly, "they've been producing this immortality elixir. How does that work, if it isn't made by the Loam?"

"That's a separate issue," Omilaena said. "You know all those corpses they were dumping on the other side of the wall? Turns out they're extracting something from them, plowing the rest into the soil, and combining the results into the elixir. Maybe the Loam was involved at some point, but not anymore. This is just pure human lives, at a horribly inefficient rate: I estimate it probably takes them a thousand lives to get one bottle of the stuff."

They both stared at her and Omilaena belatedly remembered that people didn't usually talk about converting thousands of corpses into potions. She'd had plans to soft-pedal that part, before she discovered the much more important news. Whatever, they would understand the important part if she pushed.

"What this means is that the Verdant River sect isn't rising, this is its dying gasp," she explained. "They developed this method to make everyone think that they still have the Loam, and it does seem effective, but they're failing to deliver on everything else. Everything the Loam usually creates has run out. There's no way they can keep this up for long, and the Masterful Crown clan knows it."

Kai began to nod as he accepted it. "That would match what the heirs to the different sects are doing. They're all arguing over what to do about the crisis, and trying to keep the secret. Hence why Yul Wei Ren is in charge of everything and the Verdant River sect is treated as second class in its own territory."

"Wait," Zin Nim said, "what about the elixir itself? Wherever it comes from, did you get any?"

"Oh, I stole practically all of it." Omilaena pulled a jar from her spatial satchel and flipped it in her hand. "Pure concentrated human juice, right here. I actually think that stealing such a large supply might have dealt a mortal blow to the Verdant River sect. They probably have a little more at other vaults, but this was the motherlode. They were counting on rationing this out over years and now it's gone."

"Then can we take it and gain the same power?"

"In theory, but not yet. Not because of ethical qualms, obviously not. But I also stole the records about how to use it properly and I want to make sure there aren't any pitfalls or potential side effects. We're young enough that there's no need to rush."

That made her go quiet, for some reason, while Kai was clearly still stuck on the "massive loss of human life" or something like that. "It must have started small," he mused, "then they've been starting fights in order to scale up the number of corpses. But since they actually have a powerful result, they can't keep up with demand."

"Right, that's exactly what I'd bet. I haven't seen all the numbers myself, but I'm pretty sure that's what we'll find."

"Do you think they'll come after us to get it back?"

"That really depends on how organized they are." Omilaena sighed as she thought back to the battle. "The heir to the Verdant River sect is dead, plus half the people in their territory aren't actually on their side. If it comes out that the Verdant River sect is dying, the sharks might descend to tear them apart."

"Speaking of that, Zin Nim had an unexpected encounter." Kai put his hand on her shoulder and, after a little encouragement, she explained about what had happened.

The combat came easily to her, so Omilaena got a quick explanation of Xir Xan Khan's attack on their location. She was more interested in why he'd made the assumption that the vault attack had been the primary threat, but that could come later. It was obvious there were other things that Zin Nim wasn't so comfortable talking about, ways that the encounter had disturbed her on a deeper level.

Based on what Kai coaxed out of her, Zin Nim seemed to be experiencing another crisis of confidence. Believing that the Blackblood Physique had ruined her on some level, or that she didn't live up to the stupid Cloudspire ideals camped in her head. Omilaena wished they could just cart her to bed and fuck some sense into her, but this one seemed like it wouldn't be fixed so easily.

"And so I want to keep working on Physique," Zin Nim concluded. "We need more resources, anything we can get, just in case. If there's a chance we can purify the Blackblood Physique, we need to take it as soon as possible."

"This really seems to bother you," Kai said. He was being gentle, but it wasn't enough to overcome her morose tendencies. "What is it?"

"I just... I thought the Blackblood Physique was mine, that it would help me. Now I just find out there's... another way that people could exploit me, use me as a living cauldron. I thought I was finally free of that, but it's like... it's like finding out I have another virginity that everyone has been waiting to steal all along."

"Well," Omilaena drawled, "you still haven't lost your foot virginity."

"Stop making up new virginities!" Zin Nim struck at her stomach, but when Omilaena countered by pulling her into an embrace, her squirms weren't so unhappy. Omilaena kept teasing her, getting her to blush and fume and otherwise forget about the seriousness of her problems.

Actually, Omilaena was more than a little worried herself. Not that the Blackblood Physique was really some trap, because she didn't believe power was that inflexible, but that Zin Nim might do something foolish in an effort to purify herself, something that couldn't be taken back. For all that Omilaena had seen souls grow in new directions, she had also seen people ruin themselves. Not every path was a viable one, and meddling with body and soul like this tended to go right off cliffs.

When they returned to the ship, Omilaena gave Zin Nim all of the Physique-building materials they'd collected and told her to meditate on those. During that time, Zin Nim belatedly remembered that she had the scroll she had been given. Not only was it not trapped, it actually seemed to be inside information on the Blackblood Physique.

But was it actually the right path? Omilaena claimed that she needed more time to study it, when in fact she was concerned that this was a dead end. Yes, with what was written there, she could have Zin Nim undergo the purification process. The other woman would gain a meaningful boost to her strength and a lot of excess energy, which she could give to Kai, so it wouldn't be a net negative.

And yet, even as she was reading an ancient scroll about a technique she didn't know well, Omilaena couldn't help but feel that this was wrong. She had a lot of experience with the black blood in Zin Nim's veins and it wasn't some infection or temporary catalyst. The blood had real strength, and flushing it out struck her as wasteful in a way she couldn't pin down.

As soon as she was certain Zin Nim wouldn't try anything on her own, Omilaena left her to her meditation and went out to clear her head. She actually could have used a good fuck, but both of them were distracted - it seemed like Kai was concerned about the Krysali and about his new "Redtree rebels" who were still fighting further south.

Well, one thing at a time.

Now that she had longer to think, Omilaena found some privacy and took out a sample of the Loam of the Gods. Yes, it was drained of strength, but she'd stolen it all anyway, just in case. She examined the soil, ran a few tests, and then began scrutinizing it using her goggles.

She was no farming specialist, but she knew that ordinary soil had a variety of kinds of life in it, whereas this soil was dead. Special soil from magical gardens tended to have forms of power baked into it, in one form or another.

But this... there was definitely something different here, yet none of the explanations satisfied her. It was as if this soil had more emptiness than the others. Like comparing a large jar to a small one, this soil had a capacity that she'd never seen before, except that capacity had run dry. Despite the skepticism of the others, Omilaena was quite confident that this had once been an Insanity.

And yet two of the Insanities had proved finite, and the others presumably had limits as well. They weren't artifacts of the gods or natural miracles, they were... relics of something else. Maybe they were "artifacts of the gods" except those gods weren't so different from them.

A day later, they finally reached a spot that Kai thought was safe to leave the Krysali. It didn't seem like they had been pursued, at least not very seriously. Based on everything that had happened, Omilaena wouldn't have been surprised if their opponents ended up fighting one another instead of doing anything useful. They had been a weak alliance at the best of times, and if the truth about the Loam was out, that would make them all go out for themselves.

When they met together, it looked like Zin Nim had partially recovered, at least intellectually. Omilaena glanced between them, wondering if they were going to spring a surprise on her. It wouldn't be a sexy one.

"We have several choices," Zin Nim said. "We've stolen the Verdant River sect's most valuable resources, so there is nothing tying us here. We could set out in a different direction and leave this behind."

Omilaena rolled her eyes. "But I'm guessing that Kai is too attached to his new friends?"

"Something like that."

"It isn't only that," Kai said. He shrugged off their teasing, instead meeting her gaze seriously. "We accomplished our objective, but that doesn't mean we need to leave. We've been hiding from the combined forces because that was the only way to break their defenses. But now that we have what we need, we could fight them directly."

"You explained that the Verdant River sect is dying, even if they don't know it yet." Zin Nim slapped a fist into her palm. "But they still have valuable resources. Let's go take them."

As she listened to their plan, Omilaena found herself smiling. It was a sexy surprise after all.

Chapter 454: Redtree Rebels vs River Remnants

With the Krysali deep in the uncharted parts of the Southern Rivers, Kai felt more confident waging a war. The plan meant leaving the ship, but the three of them could actually travel faster via Thunderbird's Wings. Once they had set up all security precautions they could think of, it was just Kai and his wives pushing south toward the enemy.

At least for a while. Before they even reached the regions of open warfare, Omilaena split from them to try to reestablish contact with Nymidria. Before they fully committed to a war, they needed to make sure they knew the battlefield.

They could also use an inside look at their opponents, but there was no consistent way to contact Hul Ping. If the young man knew what was good for him, which Kai was not remotely convinced of, he would keep his distance. Until then, the best he could do was find the Redtree rebels and learn just what had become of them in his absence.

If they had been defeated when he went to support Zae Zin Nim, Kai would have regretted the result, if not his decision. Instead, he was surprised to find that the majority were still alive. They hadn't retreated like he had suggested, instead taking over a major town that had been a Verdant River sect outpost. With the sect in retreat everywhere thanks to the attack, they didn't have enough cultivators to put down every minor uprising.

"You've returned, master!"

"The Verdant River dogs ran in fear!"

"We were victorious!"

Everyone cheered for him as he arrived, but they went silent when Zae Zin Nim landed beside him. When their murmuring resumed, a significant amount of it was about her, including the usual comments about her beauty and jade-like skin. He didn't think she wanted to be praised like this, not here and especially not now, and without a second glance she left to commandeer one of the more isolated buildings.

Since she probably wanted her space, Kai met with the leaders of the Redtree rebels. He was able to remember many of their names, but he was surprised how little he felt about most of them. They followed him because they respected his power, not because they were on the same side. Still, their people had been mercilessly slaughtered for the sake of young masters becoming immortal.

When he told them about it, there was a little outrage, but not as much as expected. Many seemed interested in how exactly the process worked and he had to tell them that only Omilaena knew the details. Some asked about rumors of an attack on the Loam of the Gods, but he lied there, since they wanted to keep that information secret in case they needed it later.

After confirming everything and setting up new guard formations, Kai went to catch up with Zae Zin Nim and see if anything was wrong. There didn't seem to be, to his surprise, and they passed the evening making plans. That night she joined him in bed with unusual insistence, and he wasn't sure what was behind that, even though he wasn't complaining.

"You realize they're going to make assumptions about us," he said, after they had caught their breath. She lay sprawled across his chest, hair fanned out over his side and the bed.

"Let them."

"I just know it might reflect back on you, somehow. I'm not what anyone expects of a man here, so they probably assume-"

"Don't ever say things like that." Zae Zin Nim squeezed him tighter. "You're the husband I chose."

"Alright." He stroked her back as they lay still for a while, his thoughts slowly returning to their plans. "We should be cautious, just in case the enemy is planning a serious counter-attack. Are you okay with being bait?"

"For Xir Xan Khan?" She propped herself up on his chest and regarded him thoughtfully. "I presume you will leave visibly, then see if he tries to target me again?"

"I was thinking you could lead some of the rebels, just so all of them know you're no one to trifle with, but yes. Your identity is known to them, so there's no point hiding. Take out some of their cultivators and rub their faces in it."

"That's a good plan. I think I can take any one of them, even Xir Xan Khan, but if they bring their patriarchs or other Sky Souls, I will need backup."

"I'll be waiting, don't worry."

As it happened, there was no need for their caution. Zae Zin Nim led raiding parties over the next several days, flattening every Verdant River cultivator in her path, and the sect never managed to field any serious opponents. Kai lurked nearby, hoping to ambush anyone who tried to take advantage of her isolated position, but he lurked in vain.

Eventually they came to accept that their opponents were in too much disarray to mount an effective resistance. The heir to the Verdant River sect was dead, after all, and most of the other young masters didn't care about his sect beyond what it could give them. They heard news that Yul Wei Ren had pulled back troops to guard their headquarters and was simply indulging himself as the realm fell apart around him.

Because Omilaena had robbed and destroyed the facility making immortality elixirs, the campaign to harvest the peasants had ended. To Kai's mind, that should have taken out the largest threat, but he found out that he was wrong a day later.

A group of Verdant River cultivators had banded together, including two powerful Earth Souls, and decided to exterminate the Redtree rebels. It wasn't a key military objective, just vengeance for their attacks... and vengeance backed by the might of a sect was dangerous indeed. By the time Kai heard the news and arrived, a great many of the rebels had been slaughtered.

"Master, help us!"

"They're striking from the outpost!"

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"There's a great vault there, and they're using the resources!"

Kai thought they could probably have taken down the outpost if they used their Redtree medallions as explosives, but the leaders of the rebels no longer relied on such tactics, instead using the medallions as signs of their position. He supposed it didn't really matter, since he and Zae Zin Nim could handle everything.

And his plans for taking the outpost didn't matter at all, because Zae Zin Nim was motivated by the reports of a sect vault. She led the charge, literally flattening the watchtower with a massive Coldfire Palm that incinerated most of the defenders. All he needed to do was follow and take out a few of the survivors with Manticore Quills.

While the Redtree cultivators cheered, Kai and Zae Zin Nim broke into the vault. This one was smaller, but still filled with the usual treasures like medicinal pills and flying swords. All she seemed to care about were the deep sections, which contained more esoteric materials.

"Oh, this is one of the ones Omi mentioned." Zae Zin Nim sat down with a scroll, apparently ready to work on her Physique again.

For his part, Kai judged that everything else was low value to him. He took a few of the resources he thought might be useful for the Krysali, and he always kept poisons for Omilaena, but the rest he just heaped into an armful. When he reemerged from the vault, he was surprised to find the Redtree leaders all waiting for him.

"You've won a great victory, master!"

"And such treasures!"

"Master is so generous, can't we have a few of your scraps?"

He blinked, surprised that they would assume he would really hoard everything for himself. Especially since it cost him so little to give up this relatively weak qi. As his answer, Kai dumped the armful of resources into a pile in front of them.

"I brought these out for you," he said. "We can share them."

"Master is so generous!"

"Incredible! Is this a Heavenly Jade Verdant River sword?"

Yet it seemed like the leaders were planning to hoard it all for themselves, either shoving everything into spatial items or just large pouches if they didn't have one. Kai frowned and took a hand, forcing them to distribute the resources more equally. This seemed to bother them more than if he had taken them all for himself, but they had no choice but to obey.

As far as he was concerned, and tried to explain, it was just a matter of strategy. None of the Redtree cultivators could stand up to a Sky Soul, even with more resources, so their closest military goal was to increase the number of cultivators who could join formations. That meant focusing on the lower stages who were close to leaping to the next stage. Maybe they couldn't fight against Earth Souls, but formations were the only way they would be useful, and the only way to meaningfully increase their military force.

Of course he was praised for his wisdom, but Kai questioned how much they really listened.

The battles seemed to be going well, and they pushed further into Verdant River territory. Soon they would be within range of the more important vaults, but they had yet to encounter any serious opposition. His plan had originally been to eliminate some of their most dangerous opponents, so he was mildly put out that no one dared to face them.

When he did sense a powerful force approaching, it turned out to be just Omilaena. She had a serious expression on her face, and when she leapt off her sword she replaced it in her satchel in a business-like fashion.

"Nymidria had terrible news. We need to throw out the old plan and go on the run again."

Kai groaned. "Are you serious?"

"Not even slightly." Omilaena grinned and rapped a knuckle against his chest. "She's pissed about the Loam and perfectly willing to help. It's time for us to hit one of the big vaults."

Chapter 455: Dead Treasures and Dead Vaults

Omilaena played it off like it was nothing, but meeting with Nymidria had not been easy. She had needed to spend most of a day scouting the sect headquarters, finding the new weaknesses in their defenses. The guards were in disarray and many barriers were down, which meant both new openings and a lot of chaos that could potentially get in the way.

Their direct communication seeds were all suffocated by the new aura, however, so there was no choice. Technically they had what they needed, but Omilaena wasn't going to leave without letting the dryad matriarch know what they found. She owed her that much.

Once she finally got inside, she didn't waste time: she dumped some of the supposed Loam of the Gods on the ground and let it speak for itself.

"Those fuckers." Nymidria raged for a while, throwing out more profanity than Omilaena had known she was capable of, before her tree branches finally stopped cracking ominously. Instead she settled back into the trunk, her eyes burning. "I knew they were stringing me along, but I never imagined that the Loam had been dead for so long."

"You might actually have the longest memory here," Omilaena pointed out. "How long ago do you think it died?"

"In the past, they were always so stingy with growing anything using the Loam. I think it was probably losing its strength even a century ago, and they were desperately trying to enrich the soil again, using it only rarely. When they started producing so many elixirs, I thought they must have decided to stop holding back..."

"Apparently not. So what are you going to do about it?"

The boughs of the blue tree swayed unnaturally, then Nymidria straightened her humanoid body. "I could uproot myself and abandon them, but they would retaliate against all the dryads who followed me. I can't let that happen, but I also can't take them all away."

"What if we took out the Verdant River sect?" Omilaena waited for her surprise, but it didn't come. "They know about the three of us, but not that we were working with you. We're planning to decapitate a lot of the sects here, which will leave a power vacuum. The Masterful Crown clan will need someone in the south capable of growing powerful alchemical ingredients, and if they don't have the Loam..."

"I suppose it could work." Nymidria was silent for a long time, staring over the walls of her garden. "You'd have to take out a lot of their leadership and really cripple them."

"Do you think we can't?"

"You haven't seen their full strength, not if they think the survival of the sect is on the line. These young masters are not their most dangerous cultivators."

"Is that a refusal?" Omilaena asked. She idly spun a needle through her fingers, wondering if she would need to kill the dryad matriarch. It had always been a possibility that she'd refuse to work with them, and letting her turn to their enemies was not an acceptable outcome.

"Fuck no. You three are the only ones who have treated fairly with me." Nymidria began gathering her power through her roots. "If you want to take them on, I can give you even more."

Soon Omilaena left with brand new communication seeds, several illusion wreaths, and most importantly the location of one of the sect's most critical vaults outside the headquarters. She'd left the portion of the soil with Nymidria, just in case a dryad could learn more from it than she could. The situation had become a little more complicated, but they also had a direct opening to their opponents' weaknesses.

So when Omilaena returned to Kai and Zin Nim and found that they hadn't screwed anything up either, for once things seemed to be going well.

.

..

.

It was a bit surreal for Kai to sit and watch himself and his wives running into the battle. Everything about them was all wrong, especially the way his body was flailing its arms and legs. It was probably just a trick of the mind, because the illusions should be perfect, but he thought that Omilaena and Zae Zin Nim looked worse than usual.

His real wives were further west, preparing to attack the vault. But Kai had remained back to make sure the decoys worked properly... and most likely to save their asses.

The Redtree rebels had continued taking territory from the Verdant River sect, but the much larger sect was finally hitting back. This was meant to be their decapitating blow, so they had sent along a whole formation of Earth Souls to eradicate the rebels. There had been a chance that the sect would send a Sky Soul as well, in which case Kai would have been the one to fight, but there were none to be seen.

He watched as more forces poured east, aiming to attack the doppelgangers. This was actually a real force, a major portion of the Verdant River sect, and they were adept enough at using formations to be inconvenient. Against the weaker rebels, the battle was more unbalanced.

The Earth Souls maintained their formation as they advanced on the fakes, waves of qi sweeping aside all attacks on them. They might have been able to be defeated if the Redtree cultivators had just used their medallions for explosions, but they were frustratingly reluctant to give up the status symbols. And Kai supposed that he was enabling them, because he leapt from hiding to attack.

First he flew over the enemy's lines, letting the shockwaves from Thunderbird's Wings disrupt many of them. Then he hit the formation of Earth Souls with an earth-shattering impact. The wall of qi water surrounding them actually kept him at bay, because it unified all their cultivation bases, but that wasn't going to be enough.

Before they could strike back, Kai breathed Baleful Breath directly into their formation.

All of the Earth Souls died with warbled screaming and their formation finally collapsed, water evaporating back into qi. Kai dropped into the burning darkness, then walked out of it to face the Redtree army. When he raised a fist, they let out a cheer and attacked the enemy with greater bloodthirst.

"Alright, you've done enough." Kai walked up to the decoys and held out a hand.

"Of course, master." They quickly took off the leaf wreaths and handed them over, turning back into normal cultivators as they did so. He was right... the woman who had been portraying Omilaena was awkward and stiff, with none of his wife's flowing movements.

"I'm going to finish wiping out their leadership," he told them, "but I won't have time to return. So the rest of the battle is yours to win."

They responded eagerly and he had no choice but to leave. In his absence they would probably make some decisions he wouldn't, in particular lack of coordination between different cultivator stages, but those were their mistakes to make. Now that they had thoroughly distracted the enemy, it was time to finish their attack on the vault itself.

His flight west was strangely peaceful, despite the urgency. If the enemy had planned a grand trap, they would already have closed it, so he was relatively confident his plan would work. Because the Redtree rebels had plenty of interactions with others throughout the Southern Rivers, they had assumed there were spies and only revealed the true plan at the last second, so the enemy had no time to adapt.

It seemed like they had held back their strongest, though, so there would be a real fight at the end of the road. Kai stuck to a pace where Behemoth's Heart would keep his stamina in peak condition.

Soon the fortress was visible on the horizon, a block of blue stone squatting over a river island. It wasn't so different from other fortresses, but this one had much stronger qi barriers because, according to Nymidria's information, it was one of the secret vaults for the entire Verdant River sect. And, if all went well, it would be theirs soon.

He could see the rough flow of the battle as he approached. Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena had ambushed the enemy effectively, leaving the gatehouse cultivators dead in a cloud of blue smoke, and then fought their way toward the main fortress. But it seemed like the surviving cultivators had effectively defended the barriers, and between their numbers and formations it was difficult to break through.

Kai hit the side of the barrier like a comet, slamming his full power into it. The fortress shook, and several of the cultivators spat up blood, but the wall of qi still held. He flipped back off the barrier as they tried to retaliate and landed near Omilaena and Zae Zin Nim.

Who, to his surprise, moved together simultaneously and planted kisses on his cheeks. Zae Zin Nim had to jump to do so, making it clearly a coordinated effort.

"What...?" Kai just stared at them, puzzled about why they'd do something like that in the middle of battle.

Then he heard someone spluttering angrily from the top of the fortress and began to understand.

"This is absurd!" Kan Jin Kung, heir to the Heavenly River sect, stood at the edge of the battlements and stared at them. "I thought I was saving pure maidens from a rapacious thug, but you've thrown your lot in with him? You're wanton whores! Vulgar strump-"

"We told you!" Omilaena shouted back.

"He has been shouting a lot of things," Zae Zin Nim explained quietly, "and we got tired of it."

"This is an abomination under heaven!" Kan Jin Kung vibrated furiously from his position. "They may be harlots, but both are Sky Soul talents... it's repulsive that they would be disgraced by a Nascent Foundation barbarian with only 800 Power! This is like pearls thrown before swine, a toad eating swan meat, a-"

"Stop ogling other people's wives!" Kai called back. Kan Jin Kung's face went red and he looked like he might explode. Maybe cultivators could actually do that, if they got angry enough. At minimum he might be able to cough up a mouthful of blood.

"Just once I want to be the toad," Omilaena muttered. "Aren't I eating swan meat? Just once somebody should get offended."

"Wouldn't you be a cannibal swan?" Zae Zin Nim asked, tilting her head to the side.

"I'd take that too! I'm just pissed that this is always about Kai when I did just as much to besmirch the honor of a jade maiden of Cloudspire."

"I don't think 'toad' is gendered," Kai pointed out. "It's about something lowly eating something noble."

"All of you, shut up!" Kan Jin Kung rose into the air, power glowing brightly around him and a sapphire crown lighting up over his head. "You fools are so busy indulging in vice that you never even realize that I have advanced to Sky Soul! Now face your doom!"

Kai looked at the man's soul and saw that it was true.

<

Name: Kan Jin Kung

Total Power: 1296

Cultivation: Sky Soul (900)

Physique: E-0 (80)

Immortal Body (+200)

Soul Level: 4 (16)

Flowing Crown (+100)

>

The leap between stages had granted him a huge jump in strength, from roughly 800 to 1300. Part of that was due to an improvement in his Immortal Body trait, which actually puzzled Kai more. Did they have more of the elixir that he hadn't known about?

But there was no time for that, because in that moment Kan Jin Kung brought the force of an entire fortress of cultivators down on them.

Chapter 456: The End of the Heavenly River Heir

The combined assault of the fortress was actually formidable: it had a Sky Soul at its head, with multiple Earth Souls and hundreds of other cultivators behind him. Qi rushed forward in a magical river, shattering against the stones and annihilating everything in the courtyard.

Kai wasn't there, of course. The three of them had leapt clear of the attack, and though the shockwaves of power might have harmed weaker cultivators, they all had the Physique to endure it.

While he was still in midair, Kai was surprised to see Kan Jin Kung leaving the barrier, flashing at him with surprising speed. Several flying swords lashed out and he only managed to catch the first two, so the third cut across his chest.

Just a shallow cut, though. Kai reached out and nearly grabbed his opponent before he retreated to the qi barrier.

"You see now?" Kan Jin Kung glared at all three of them from his position in the sky. "I've grown far more powerful since we last fought, and I've advanced to Rank 18 among Floodisle City's immortals!"

"Does that matter here?" Zae Zin Nim asked, mildly puzzled. "What rank was he before?"

"He was 16," Omilaena said, "but how much of that was due to his family?"

"Shut up!" Kan Jin Kung practically screamed the words and floated higher. "With a Sky Soul's cultivation base, my presence technique will finish you!"

The sapphire crown over his head began to glow, and the pressure washing over them was stronger than before, but this time it didn't matter. Zae Zin Nim had prepared herself, Omilaena injected herself with a syringe, and Kai just took the force and endured.

Then he activated Banchlain's Aura and struck back.

If he had been able to merge it with other techniques, it might have done more, but the essence had still grown in strength after so much use. His aura of terror swept the Flowing Crown backward and pierced the qi barrier, sending many cultivators collapsing or fleeing. Kan Jin Kung stared at him, barely able to resist, fear beginning to creep into his expression.

He should have been looking at Zae Zin Nim instead. During all the posturing, she had been drawing together her qi and mana. The cultivator formations realized there was a threat and began to hurl techniques at her, but Kai and Omilaena came together to defend, giving her time to complete the technique.

When Zae Zin Nim leapt into the air, she looked tiny and light, like a leaf in the wind. But when her palm swept forward, a Coldfire Palm the size of the fortress rumbled from her.

It collided with the great qi barrier and for several seconds the two ground together, making cultivators collapse on all sides. When the flames died out, the fortress wall was broken and the qi barrier utterly destroyed. Behind it, the cultivators looked on in terror and some began to break out of their formations.

"Stand together!" Kan Jin Kung turned his presence on his own side, forcing them back into formation. "If you don't fight them, I'll kill you myself!"

It was a decent display of leadership, if twisted leadership, but he was too late: Kai, Omilaena, and Zae Zin Nim were already inside the fortress among them.

They were fighting against a small army, one that had fought together as a sect for years... and there was no comparison in their coordination. When one of the enemy formations managed to generate a large qi attack, Zae Zin Nim was already in its path, canceling it with the Coldfire Corona. Every time they attempted to attack at range, Omilaena deflected their projectiles with her own. When Kan Jin Kung tried to attack their flanks, Kai was always waiting in his path.

Their counterattacks were devastating. Kai and Omilaena unleashed swarms of needles and quills that annihilated any cultivator outside of defenses. When he ran alongside Zae Zin Nim, their blows tore through qi barriers like paper. She and Omilaena joined together to unleash assaults of ice and blue fire that overwhelmed all attempts at combined techniques.

As the battle continued, and Kan Jin Kung failed to leverage his Sky Soul effectively, it turned into a rout. A large formation of cultivators fled toward one exit, only for Omilaena to block them with a cloud of poison. Kai saw others fleeing in the opposite direction and leapt past them to breathe a wall of Baleful Breath.

A few of the cultivators, staring back at the yard in horror, actually plunged into the darkness and died instantly.

Some of the others built up a formation of whirling wind that protected them enough to advance into the poison, but a second later their bodies came flying out of the blue cloud, their chests crushed. Zae Zin Nim emerged from it, breathing the poison easily.

Soon the only real threat was Kan Jin Kung, who pushed himself past his limits trying to fight all three of them at once. If he had been a more effective fighter or leader during the main battle, he might have impeded them, but on his own against three opponents of similar strength, he was helpless.

Kai reflected that he actually should have been more of a challenge, given his 1300 Power and other advantages. Despite their mockery, Kan Jin Kung wasn't weak in absolute terms. But the problem was that he had too little experience in actual battles, being too used to defeating opponents with overwhelming power. When he was at a disadvantage and needed to show his real character, strategy, or tenacity... he crumbled.

So what was a desperate fight for his life was, for them, just practice.

They could have ended it sooner, with poison or a dozen other methods, but they kept battering the young master across the devastated fortress. Even though none of them said it, they were all thinking the same thing. This was a chance to test out their techniques against a Sky Soul, because there were enemy cultivators stronger and more experienced than this.

When they fought a real opponent, they would be ready. That, Kai reflected, was the real difference between them. Kan Jin Kung never looked upward, only stared inward in awe of his own power.

Eventually they couldn't drag things out any longer: the heir to one of the largest sects in the Southern Rivers was barely on his feet, bleeding from a dozen wounds. The three of them had him surrounded, no one making the final move.

"You... you could have had perfect lives..." Kan Jin Kung's eyes wandered back to the two women. "You could have any husband you wanted and lived in luxury. Instead, you give in to your lusts and-"

"That's enough out of you." Omilaena closed the distance and raised one of her needles just beneath his throat. While he trembled there, she leaned closer with a malicious smirk. "If just seeing us was enough to offend you, just knowing you exist offends me. Let me tell you what's going to happen. I am going to drive this through your brain, you'll die, and then all three of us are going to fuck on top of your corpse."

Kan Jin Kung started to beg for mercy, but her needle pierced through his jaw so forcefully the tip burst from his skull. He twitched several times and then collapsed, and like that, the heir to the Heavenly River sect was dead.

"We are not going to do any such thing," Zae Zin Nim said. "That's disgusting."

"He doesn't know that." Omilaena turned away from the corpse with a shrug. "I figured that if he couldn't stop thinking about us having sex, he might as well think about it while he died."

"If you really insist, we can be intimate in the vault. At least there would be privacy there."

Omilaena grinned in delight, even though Zae Zin Nim probably wasn't serious, and followed her as they went to search for the vault doors. Meanwhile, Kai roamed through the ruined fortress, killing off any cultivators that had survived the assault. None were in good shape, but some had only lost many mouthfuls of blood instead of dying.

Killing those in pain wasn't solely an act of mercy... Kai also made another attempt to absorb their essence. He could feel his hunger absorbing their qi, on the edge of something he couldn't quite grasp. These cultivators were all his enemies but he felt no personal animosity toward them, they were just parts of the sect system. A shame, because he was so close to advancing Banchlain's Aura further.

No other reinforcements came, because there were none left. Yul Wei Ren hid himself in the sect headquarters, burying his head in the sand while his allies deserted him. The rest of the cultivator army in the region was currently being defeated by the Redtree rebels. There were larger forces who had yet to enter the battle, but the Masterful Crown clan's control of the region was beginning to collapse.

Kai tracked the others by their essences and found them in the center of the fortress, having destroyed a large set of doors. The interior was filled with all manner of treasures... not as wild a collection was he would have expected, after his experience of Rosemount, but still impressive. There were even huge piles of gold and jade, which they might as well take since they were the victors. His spatial ring from the elves was much larger and higher quality than average, but he had to wonder if it would all fit.

Meanwhile, his wives were examining the Physique-related items. Zae Zin Nim looked excited, while Omilaena shook her head slowly.

"These might be the ingredients from the scroll," she said, "but that doesn't mean your Physique can advance. We still need to decide on the exact methods."

"But these are the last," Zae Zin Nim said. "Now, no matter how difficult a path we choose, we won't lack for resources."

"The path could be the hardest part. There are still some issues you need to work out."

"It will be fine." Kai wrapped them both into an embrace and felt them gradually relax. "Whatever we have to face, whatever they throw at us, we'll be ready."

He knew that future battles would be more difficult. The Masterful Crown clan had multiple sects under its control, after all, and more powerful forces would be gathering as it became clear that this was a threat to all of them. Honestly, he was looking forward to it.