V13 Chapter 78 – The Defense of Heaven’s Garden, Part 1

“What is the name of this city anyway?” Sen asked.

Falling Leaf glanced at him before returning her gaze to the approaching spirit beasts. The pair stood on the wall he’d raised with his formation, while the talisman masters and formation masters worked frantically below to finish setting up their traps. The ghost panther shrugged.

“I think I heard someone call it Heaven’s Garden.”

Sen snorted and said, “Well, that’s just about grandiose enough to be real.”

“Are we ready?”

“I suppose we’re as ready as we can be for this.”

“But we’re not ready,” she said.

“No, but as someone told me once, there’s no such thing as too much time for training. I suspect the same holds for preparing for a battle. We haven’t had nearly enough time, but the army is far more experienced and disciplined than it was the last time we faced a siege. The same might even be true for the cultivators. Well, the experienced part anyway. That’s going to make a big difference.”

“Enough of a difference?” asked Falling Leaf.

“Maybe. I hope so. Why? Are you worried?”

The transformed ghost panther was silent for a long moment before she said, “I will die before I let them take me prisoner.”

“It won’t come to that!” said Sen.

He’d said it too fast. He knew he had, but the very idea she was suggesting made everything inside of him clench up. Knowing that what she was saying was the sane choice didn’t make it any easier. If the spirit beasts managed to capture her, they would carry her away to the Beast King. He would make her death something beyond hideous. Sen forced calm on himself, even if it was a tenuous calm. The truth of the matter was that he would face a similarly terrible end if the spirit beasts managed to capture him. Put in that position, he would choose a death of his own making. Could he deny Falling Leaf the same choice? Did he have the right? Even though the words made him want to scream, he said them anyway. Not because he believed them. Not because they were true. He said them because she needed to hear them.

“If it comes to that, I’ll understand.”

As he watched some inner tension fade from Falling Leaf’s body, Sen couldn’t escape what he’d done. He had, for all intents and purposes, given his permission for her to kill herself if it came down to it. His heart hurt so much that he worried he might never breathe again. The urge to scream almost seized him again. It was only an act of superhuman control that let him keep a calm expression on his face. Letting the truth slip out would undo the good he had just done. Nor would it take much to expose that truth. She knew him too well. Fortunately, there were all those spirit beasts approaching the city to distract her.

“It will begin soon,” she observed

She was right about that. It was why he was standing on the wall in the first place. He’d been racing from place to place for the last few hours to adjust formations, confer with the generals, and even to visit the palace. That last had just been to make sure that no one was trying to put Chou Dai Lu in her place. He had sent Xu Xiao Dan with her to prevent that, but it never hurt to be sure. He’d also gone to disabuse the cultivators lingering in the throne room of any ideas they had of sitting out the battle. That was met with objections about their value. Sen’s response to that was simple because he had neither the time nor the patience for such foolishness.

“If you will not help, you have no value and should be put to death right now.”

That lone statement had brought all of their whining to an immediate stop. It was replaced by sudden declarations about how they could help. That was an improvement, but also something he had no time to manage himself. He sent them off to Song Lan, which he was sure they would all curse him for later. In her own way, she was even less patient with stupidity than he was. After that, it was back to racing from place to place in a mad bid to make the preparations go faster. After all, every trap they completed meant a few less spirit beasts they had to fight directly. It was only in these final minutes before the battle started that Sen finally allowed himself to stop. He needed these precious moments together with Falling Leaf, since they might be the last they ever spent together in this life.

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“Do you have any of those pastries you made for Ai?” asked the ghost panther abruptly.

Sen gave her a long look before he summoned one from a storage ring. He’d put it into the storage ring soon after they finished baking, so it was still warm. Falling Leaf took it with a smile and ate it slowly. Ai had been on his mind a great deal in the preceding hours, and he took enormous comfort in the knowledge that she was far, far away from this madness. Still, it had caught him a bit off guard that Falling Leaf was thinking about her as well. He supposed that the pastry was the ghost panther’s way to remember.

“She’s safe,” said Sen.

“Of course, she is. She has the Caihong and the Kho to watch over her. Even the mad one is there. I’ll be sad if I can’t see her again, though.”

Sen’s heart threatened to shatter then and there. This was one of many reasons he hated being the emperor. If he wasn’t, Falling Leaf wouldn’t be there. She wouldn’t be surrounded by spirit beasts that had a special interest in seeing her dead. Not that the death of anyone in his army was less tragic for their family, but she was his family. At the same time, she wouldn’t leave even if he begged her to. She would tell him that it was her life to spend as she saw fit. It was that knowledge alone that kept him from making the plea. Instead, he said the only thing he trusted himself to say.

“It would make me sad if I couldn’t see her again, as well.”

Falling Leaf nodded as though that was the right and proper thing to say. Then, the moment was over. He watched as she summoned her sanjiegun, that odd three-section staff that Fu Ruolan had taught her to wield. Using it on the wall would be a fool’s errand for anyone but a cultivator or a transformed spirit beast like her. The wall simply wasn’t that wide. However, he knew from experience that her balance was extraordinary. It might even be better than his own. A fact that he found humbling given how far he’d taken his body cultivation. He pushed all of that aside and centered his mind as the moment closed in on them. While he’d been able to hear the approach of the spirit beasts for a while, now he could feel their approach shaking the wall he stood on.

“You should go,” said Falling Leaf.

“Go where?” he asked.

“To do whatever it is you mean to do that will shake the very souls of our enemies.”

Sen studied his friend for a moment.

“Am I truly so predictable?”

She thought about it for a few seconds before she nodded and said, “Yes. Also, I know you. I know what to look for. You’ve been building something with your qi for the last hour or so. Anything you spent that much time on can only be meant to terrify. Especially since the spirit beasts have been building something as well.”

“Well,” said Sen. “You’re not wrong. I’d tell you to be careful, but I guess I’ll have to settle for telling you not to die.”

“We both know you’re going to do more dangerous things than I am.”

Sen shrugged. That was probably true, too.

“I’ll see you after it’s finished,” he said, trying to project a confidence he didn’t entirely feel.

“After it’s finished,” she echoed.

With that, Sen took to the skies. Falling Leaf’s assessment was mostly right. He did intend to terrify the spirit beasts, but the time he’d spent had more to do with the weather. Calling down one lightning strike from a clear sky was fairly simple for him. Calling down enough lightning to make a difference was something else. He’d spent the last hour borrowing qi from the environment and building a web in the sky. He’d taken inspiration from Glimmer of Night, who was busy preparing his own welcoming gifts. Fortunately, the spirit beasts were going to do something with water. He’d been able to read their qi manipulation well enough for that. It’s why he’d chosen lightning as his weapon of choice. Sen just needed to wait for them to actually trigger their technique.

The wait wasn’t long. He’d thought that they were going to try to topple the wall with some kind of flood. That approach would fail. The wall stretched deep into the ground. Once again, though, he was surprised by their choice. Rather than try to bring the wall down with brute force, vast lances of water formed in the air and began to rotate. They meant to bore through the wall. I really hate whichever spirit beast is guiding this battle right now, he thought. It was a good tactic. It would probably even work if his people didn’t disrupt it. As the lances shot toward the wall, though, a variety of nascent soul techniques went out to meet them. The earth rose up to block some. Fire techniques turned others into steam. Wind techniques blew many of them apart. Master Feng stepped in then, gathered the water that was no longer under anyone’s control, and hurled it back at the spirit beasts.

The water didn’t hurt any of them. It just soaked them and left them running through puddles. It was only then that Sen started activating his web. And death descended from above.