Chapter 223 — Iron Hounds

My Dao to Eternity

Chapter 223 — Iron Hounds

"Enemy presence!" Meng shouted. "Third and fourth sections, turn! Iron Thorn Barricade!"

The remaining ballistae turned, and two junior disciples pressed their palms against the earth. The ground between them and Li Fan split open. Dozens of iron spikes tore through the mud and formed a solid wall.

Li Fan kept his sword sheathed. He extended one finger toward the ground beneath the spikes, and the neutral, ancient qi cultivated through years of returning every technique he had studied to its origin entered the earth. It spread through the rigid metal structure created by the Myriad Craft disciples and disrupted its formation.

The spikes lost their shape and melted into liquid silver. The metal flowed backward through the formation's spiritual pathways, climbed the tripod legs of the two remaining ballistae, and hardened inside their mechanical assemblies.

"What did you do?" one junior disciple shouted. His control plate sparked and burned his fingers. "My connection is broken! The formation rejects my command!"

"Your machines have too many moving parts," Li Fan said calmly. "The more components a mechanism contains, the more points it has that can be turned against it."

From above, the Azure Cloud youth saw the ground formation collapse and descended at once, his sword surrounded by three feet of compressed green wind qi. "Die, rogue!"

Li Fan raised his eyes. His hand moved without hesitation. One moment his hand was empty; the next, a plain steel sword met the descending attack.

The collision produced a sharp ringing sound that tore through the nearby brush. The youth's full-strength strike, reinforced by Mid-Stage wind qi, stopped against Li Fan's sword. Li Fan had met the attack at the moment when its momentum had fully committed and its direction could no longer change. His Sword Intent concentrated within the cheap steel gave the weapon greater penetrating force. His Returning Marrow arm absorbed the remaining impact through its dense bones and reinforced flesh. The three factors together stopped the attack.

"Your wind is fast," Li Fan said, his mask only inches from the youth's face. "It lacks weight."

He twisted his wrist and redirected the force along the youth's original attack path. The youth's wrists suffered the returning force, and his sword tore free from his hands. His body was thrown backward through the air, and his robes ripped under the pressure.

"Protect Senior Brother!" the other two Azure Cloud disciples shouted. They descended to either side of him and joined their hands, raising a rotating shield of wind between themselves and Li Fan.

Li Fan left them where they were. His attention remained on the four Myriad Craft cultivators.

The three iron hounds had already turned around. Their jaws opened and closed with metallic force, their quartz eyes glowing deep red as they rushed across the disturbed ground.

"Hounds of the Iron Forge: Rend!" Meng shouted. His prosthetic finger struck the damaged control plate.

The three constructs leaped from separate directions. Their iron bodies carried enough weight to crush a horse, while their jaws were reinforced to break through spiritual barriers.

Li Fan stepped forward. When the first hound's jaws closed toward his neck, his body vanished in a burst of red sparks. The hound passed through the space he had occupied and crashed into the mud.

Li Fan appeared beneath the second hound and pressed his bare palm against its blackened iron underside. He drew spiritual force from the damp mist covering the basin, condensing the moisture and residual lightning qi within it into a narrow point at his fingertips.

The hound's iron armor had been designed to withstand attacks from outside. Its internal mechanisms were less protected. Li Fan's condensed lightning qi entered through the joints and spread through the chassis. The metal groaned as the internal formation pathways overloaded, and several seams burst open.

The strike passed through the hound's chassis, destroying its formation pathways and rupturing its internal spiritual-fluid reservoir. Its quartz eyes went dark, and the construct collapsed into the mud.

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The third hound leaped toward Li Fan's back. Without turning, Li Fan swung his steel sword in a level backhand strike. He concentrated his qi, physical strength, and Sword Intent into the single movement. The sword passed through the hound's neck. Its head separated from the body and fell into the mud, while the headless construct slid to a stop at Meng's feet.

"Two breaths," Meng whispered, his face pale. "He destroyed two Iron-Forge Hounds in two breaths."

"Brother Meng! Behind you!"

The first hound had recovered from its failed leap and turned toward Li Fan again. Its quartz lens suddenly shifted away from him. Five paces away, Li Fan stood holding a thin thread of gray qi drawn from the ruined core of the second hound. He inserted his own qi into the local control formation without touching the construct. He had no need to seize control of the hound. He merely changed the formation's designated target.

The hound's lens changed from dull purple to crimson. Its head turned toward Senior Disciple Meng.

"No! Cease! Formation command, cease!" Meng shouted as he struck his control plate repeatedly. The hound answered with a harsh mechanical cry and charged. Mud flew beneath its iron paws. Meng retreated rapidly and drew a heavy bronze wrench to defend against his own creation.

While Meng struggled against the construct he had created, Li Fan walked toward the two remaining ballistae.

The junior disciples assigned to them stared at him. One abandoned his post, dropped his control plate, and fled toward the Azure Cloud cultivators above. The other threw a handful of explosive talismans across the distance.

Li Fan ignored the talismans and the disciple holding them. His sword cut through the space between them and severed the thin spiritual threads connecting the talismans to the disciple's qi.

The threads broke with a sharp ringing sound. The talismans lost both their guidance and spiritual activation and fell into the mud.

Before the disciple could react, Li Fan crossed the distance and struck his abdomen with the heavy pommel of his sword. He avoided the edge. Returning Marrow strength concentrated behind the blow. The disciple's defensive barrier shattered, and his body flew forty feet before striking the base of a basalt pillar. He collapsed unconscious.

Li Fan turned toward the two disabled ballistae. His divine sense entered their frames and examined every gear, pressure plate, and formation pathway within them.

The frames were well constructed, better than the machines he had seen in the formation workshops of Myriad Beast City. Their makers had understood mechanical construction thoroughly. Li Fan examined the nearest mechanism and identified its operating structure.

"A copper pressure plate controls the trigger," he said quietly. "A rotating ammunition mechanism feeds the bolts. Reverse the gear while the plate remains pressed, and the mechanism will complete the remaining movement."

He tapped the base of the nearer machine with his boot and sent metal-attuned qi into the tripod. The liquid metal he had already forced into its gears shifted into a secondary ammunition chamber. The inverted target-lock formation turned the carriage through half a circle.

The ballista locked onto the sky and aligned with the three Azure Cloud cultivators still hovering within their defensive shield.

"What is it doing?" the youth shouted from above. His wrists still throbbed from Li Fan's earlier redirection. He watched the heavy iron bolt turn toward his chest. "Brother Meng! Shut down your machines!"

"I cannot!" Meng shouted from sixty yards away. His bronze wrench struck the hound's skull. "The entire formation has turned! The spiritual pathways are running backward!"

Li Fan lowered his hand.

The altered ballista fired.

The heavy iron bolt, covered in explosive runes, crossed the sky and struck directly toward the blue defensive shield surrounding the three Azure Cloud cultivators.

"Strengthen the barrier!" the youth shouted. His face paled as he poured his remaining wind qi into the shield. His two companions joined hands beside him and circulated their cultivation to its limit.

The bolt struck the center of the shield and exploded. Orange fire and black smoke spread across the sky, destroying the remaining suspended wind edges. The shockwave swept through the basin, flattening the remaining brush and throwing stagnant water fifteen feet into the air.

The shield survived, but cracks covered its surface and its light weakened to a faint glow. The three cultivators were thrown thirty feet upward. Blood appeared at their noses and ears as the backlash damaged their meridians.

"We cannot withstand another strike!" one of the younger disciples gasped. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and his qi circulated erratically through his damaged meridians.

"There will not be another strike against us," the youth said. He wiped the blood from his lip and looked through the settling smoke. "Look at the ground."

Li Fan had already reached the fourth ballista. He did not fire it toward the Azure Cloud cultivators. Using his object-controlling technique, he lifted the three remaining iron bolts from the ammunition chest and suspended them horizontally around the weapon's frame. Their safety pins had already been removed, and the explosive runes at their tips glowed with unstable red light.

"He is not aiming at us," the third disciple whispered. His eyes widened as he followed the direction of the bolts. "He is aiming at—"

Li Fan pointed toward the center of the Myriad Craft camp. Meng had finally forced his rebellious hound to the ground beneath the weight of his bronze wrench.

"An expedition should share everything," Li Fan said. His voice remained flat. "Including the weapons."

He lowered his hand.

The three bolts shot forward together under the concentrated force of his qi. They tore three deep lines through the mud as they traveled toward the Myriad Craft camp.

Meng abandoned his fight with the hound. He threw the wrench aside, bit down hard, and escaped in a streak of yellow smoke toward the edge of the basin, leaving both his constructs and junior disciples behind.

The three remaining Myriad Craft disciples were too slow to follow him.