Chapter 41- Heavenly Blood Falls

It had been a bit of trouble persuading the wolf spirit to return to his fang home. He had in his mouth a bit of stone the size of an egg, and he wouldn’t part with it. Regrettably, he had to. Tian wasn’t about to take any more “gifts” from Palace Lord Song, especially when it was stolen. The wolf was ultimately persuaded by a bit of fish diced and mushed into a meatball with minced earthly realm cabbage.

“I have the oddest feeling of swindling a baby. But it’s really for his own good. Also our own good.” Tian muttered. “Well, you know all about that, Heavenly Demon Heavenly Demon.”

“That’s out of line. He didn’t swindle us, he gave us a bit of metal. It’s his greatest sincerity.” Liren shook her head. “He wasn’t lying about the rare materials in it either, so that’s nice.”

Heavenly Demon was vibrating with rage. He hadn’t stopped battering them with his aura. It was certainly a lot stronger now, like being in a high wind, rather than the flutter of fritillaries. It wasn’t enough.

“He said that a single corner of it was worth more than the kingdom, right? So doesn’t that make us the richest people in the wasteland?” Tian blinked, suddenly alarmed. “We have to hide it!”

“Don’t worry, nobody knows what it is. We’ll just tell people it’s a paperweight or something.” Liren patted his shoulder.

Heavenly Demon’s face twisted, and with immense reluctance, perhaps even with a trace of self loathing, he said “It’s not bound to you yet. It needs both your blood and This Seat’s seal. Bring it out. Let’s settle accounts before leaving this… tomb of horrors.”

“So do we both bleed on it, or how does this work?” Tian asked.

“Just one of you. This Demon would be bullying infants if He didn’t mention that, while the token does come with immense privileges and authority, it also makes you the target of other Heavenly Demons’ Earthly Stewards, as well as other cults, sects and powers looking to expand their power or proclaim their glory. It is also known as a duel token.”

Tian frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that much, but it made a sort of sense in the multi-power world of the Northern Expanse. If no one was in charge, then everyone would be scheming and fighting for advantage. But which of them should bind the token? His survivability was better than Liren’s, what with his healing, medicinal arts and-

Liren bit her thumb and began to thoroughly rub the blood into every nook and cranny of the talisman. “Do you need essence blood, or will this do?”

“Oi! We should talk about this.”

“Absolutely. Talk away. I assume the seal goes on the back?” She started layering her strokes, going for an even, and complete, coverage.

“Before the seal goes on!”

“What’s there to talk about?” She turned and looked square at Tian. “This is my stage. Strong fighters at roughly my level will come and constantly challenge me. They will use all sorts of methods, have all sorts of weapons and techniques at their disposal, and fight with their lives on the line. I can’t think of anything better for advancing my spear dao, purifying my qi, and it’s going to do great things for my body cultivation. You, on the other hand, will feel bad about all the stupid violence and try to charm your way out of every fight. Which is just not going to happen. So really, what is there to talk about?”

“Why would you just assume the people you would fight would be on your level?”

Heavenly Demon nodded slightly. “While any holders of a token like this would be in what you term the novitiate stage, the impact of cultivation and methods aren’t always comparable. This Seat doesn’t know why his aura doesn’t affect you two, but he was untouchable and unrivaled in the wasteland these last two hundred years. Likewise, daoist sects are reasonably common in the Expanse. This Seat knows of at least six people in the Northern Expanse who hold duel tokens for their powers and are Imperfect Human Realm Daoists."

“I said what I said. Do it.” Liren held out the token. Tian shut up. He didn’t like it, but Liren was almost certainly right. Heavenly Demon traced a crimson sigil in the air, something that made the air shimmer and groan as it sank into the back of the token. The golden “Demon” on the front shone in a blaze the color of a harvest moon, pale gold, familiar, and inhuman. The sigil on the back, all jagged lines and sharp curves, looked like a wound that had barely clotted, ready to bleed again at the lightest touch.

“There. You are now the third of my Earthly Stewards, permitted to access any place within the Peculiar of Snakeback Hills, other than the Star-Locked Chambers within the Cathedral of Skepetrich. You may compel any below the rank of Heavenly Demon to provide you aid or shelter within those lands, seize any goods, and generally act as you please with the understanding that all lives and things within the Peculiar ultimately belong to me, so have a bloody care! Within the broader lands controlled by the Cult, you may expect a high level of deference, and should you kill a member of the cult, it will fall to me to punish you or not. Should you encounter another Earthly Steward belonging to a different Heavenly Demon, no need for words, kill on sight. It will be an excellent way for me to expand my holdings. The only exception is if there are other enemies present or if the Cult is at war.”

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“And outside the Cult controlled areas?”

“Grit your teeth. Weaklings will fear the token, and the strong will seek you out. This seat recalls something about larger independent merchants offering discounts upon seeing it, and some flying junks will offer free transportation on the understanding that you will help defend the junk if necessary. This Seat has never flown on anything other than private vessels, so He wouldn’t know. Nor has he ever purchased anything at a store.”

Tian nodded. “Right. Merchants cannot be trusted.”

Heavenly Demon gave him a contemptuous look. “Why would This Seat buy something he could just take? If He cannot take it, he would rather find an alternative or do without.”

Tian whipped out a notebook and started writing furiously. Burning Heaven nodded firmly along. Liren sighed and looked heavenward for salvation.

“We are recovered. Time to see the results of our cultivation. Anyone want to give the people on the other side a chance to surrender?” Liren asked.

“Think they will give us one?” Tian snorted.

“Certainly. After they have trapped us, crippled us or otherwise made us ready to confess everything. Before killing us to prevent us from telling anyone else how to get in, of course.” This time Liren snorted.

“Goes without saying, really.” Burning Heaven nodded. “No need for any nonsense. Let’s just crash out of here, kill our way through whatever barricades, formations or other traps have been set, then when we are out of the encirclement, we turn around and pin them against their own defenses as we counter-kill them. If they cannot see our glory and know to prostrate themselves or flee, they have only themselves to blame. They can argue any injustice to King Yan in Hell, and see if he cares any more than I do.”

“This seat should have expected the crane to be the grown adult in a party from Ancient Crane Mountain,” Heavenly Demon grumbled. “We will do exactly that.”

“Oh, kind of you to say. Sometimes I feel very childish around people like my Master, who is who knows how many thousands, or tens of thousands, of years old.”

Heavenly Demon nodded heavily. “Everyone feels that way. The ancients truly are ancient, making mockery of our few centuries.”

“Yes indeed. I sometimes wonder if I will feel a little less inferior when I reach my third decade.”

Tian tilted his head. “Have you even completed your first decade? If you have, you must be just barely into your second.”

“That counts as reaching it.” She turned her head sharply away.

Heavenly Demon’s hair was floating around him in a nebulae of crimson and black. A rising howling came from the void around him, as he began to hover in place. “Out! I must be out of this place!” He blew his whistle and summoned his flying tiger, urging the beast to go faster. Liren and Tian laughed and hopped on Burning Heaven’s back. She grew enormous, and with gentle claws, grabbed both man and tiger before they came to a messy end.

The trip through the interstitial space between the hidden realm and the ordinary world was less upsetting this time, and rather fascinating for the brief moment Tian could glimpse it. There was something out there, but Tian couldn’t make out the details and it was either very, very big and very far away, or quite tiny and close by. It was simply impossible to determine the scale of things- and then they were through. Back into the harsh sunlight of the Redstone Wastes, under the pitiless blue skies, and surrounded by heretics. An awful nostalgia.

The heretics hadn’t been idle since they were away. Multilayered arrays snapped into existence, sealing earth and sky, and blocking all eight directions. The qi was thrown into chaos, even as an invisible toxin flooded the air. Tian heard gongs ringing, metallic birds screeching an alarm. He could see shadows rising on the other side of the ward, heretics, strange beasts, things he couldn’t easily identify from the shape alone. Tian summoned his staff and stood tall on Burning Heaven’s back. Liren stood right behind him, spear in hand.

“You said it right. No need to talk nonsense. Kill them all!” Tian was roaring by the end, swinging out his staff and pointing straight ahead. Heavenly Demon said even less.

Man and tiger leapt forward through the air. Tian saw a shimmer, then his eyes narrowed and he could see red hands thirty feet long reach out and sink yards long nails into the qi of the array. Heavenly Demon flexed his fingers, then his back, ripping his hands apart. The array screamed, then contorted.

“More sacrifices! We need more-” The voice cut off when the array was torn apart, then exploded. The world went white, then brown, then black. Tian kept his eyes moving, his alertness sweeping through the storm of chaotic qi and dust. He let Burning Heaven handle the flying. An unfamiliar shape was hidden in the dust. Tian thrust out with his staff, sending a long beam of righteous qi out to strike it directly.

“Son of a hundred fathers!” The words sounded guttural, chewed, and mangled. The shape blurred, vanishing for a moment as it rushed forward, too quickly for Tian to follow. A leonine face burst from the dust, human in part, but with the muzzle and eyes of a beast. His hand, paw-like and clawed, was already descending, the strike too fast and fatal for Tian to counter.

Not too fast for Liren, though.

The rushing heretic was met with a spear thrust carrying the weight of a thunderhead. Tian could feel the blow before she moved, the explosive excitement of the energy within her forming behind the unique qi flows and what he now understood was shen flows that made up Stormfall. It felt impossibly quick, and it took him a moment to realize that she had read the attack and thrust where, and when, the heretic would arrive.

He could feel her surprise as the horn spear split apart the sudden shield that erupted around the heretic. It tore through a straw doll and a floating shield as well, before lodging in the heretic’s head. The tip of it was dipping red blood and greyish brainmatter down the heretic’s back. She flicked the corpse off her spear and collected the storage ring with a thought. Tian stuck a talisman onto the body as it fell. No sense in giving a necromancer hunting for easy benefits a powerful corpse to refine. He kept his eyes moving, waiting for the next attack. It was easy enough to find. He just had to look at Heavenly Demon and the storm of violence around him.

Heavenly Demon was the unshakable first place on the Rising Dragon and Phoenix Rankings. The editors kept him there as a warning to the heroes of the Wasteland, begging them not to throw their lives away. Rains of blood wetted the already red sands below. Clearly, the heretics weren’t readers.