V13 Chapter 79 – Bloodier Opportunity

Swift Wind ground his teeth in barely suppressed fury as he finally understood what the damnable human had been up to. As the lightning crashed down on the first wave of the assault, the water that the old monster, Feng Ming, had hurled back at them carried that lightning from one victim to the next. The way that water and lightning mixed that way was something that Swift Wind had known about. He just hadn’t remembered it in time for this battle. It was a mistake he would never make again, but that didn’t change the fact that his soldiers were dying by the thousands. Granted, most of them weren’t sapient, but they might have become sapient one day. That door was now closed to them until their next lives. Of course, their souls might return in human bodies next time. A fate that Swift Wind considered even worse than death.

The tiger spirit beast glared at the sky, and his hands closed into fists. He wished they were closing around the throat of Lu Sen. He could feel the thing that the human had built up there, but he couldn’t reach it. The humans had been clever, sending the old monster to cull the flying spirit beasts. They were the ones who would have been best able to disrupt that terrible working. Even now, it was turning his juniors into charred husks out on the battlefield. The smell of it was overwhelming, sickening, and inescapable. If not for the tenuous control that sapient spirit beasts could exert over their non-sapient kin, that smell alone might have ended this battle. The non-sapient spirit beasts would have fled from it in open terror.

Nor had the tiger expected that wall to simply appear out of nowhere. He knew the human cultivators could manipulate stone and earth, but never in his dreams had he expected something on that scale. Not with so little time to prepare. It had not been in his plans. That was why he’d been forced to use the water working, only to have it used against them. He had underestimated the humans. He’d assumed that they were overconfident and stupid when they’d simply gone to the city full of humans he’d left there as bait. Nor did he have any idea what was on the other side of that new wall. It would be a trap, obviously, but there was no way to know what kind of trap.

There was no fast way to go either through or under the wall. That left the air as the only way to glean information. And the cultivators on that wall had no intention of allowing a flying spirit beast to get close enough. That was assuming that Lu Sen didn’t simply burn them out of the sky. You were told, he thought bitterly. Boulder’s Shadow had issued a warning before Swift Wind had come to part of the continent. The ghost panther had said it was folly to underestimate the cunning and power of Lu Sen and Feng Ming. He’d dismissed that warning, assuming that careful planning and overwhelming numbers would suffice.

And it had, until now. The kingdoms in this part of the continent had been fragmented. More concerned with destroying each other than countering the threat of the spirit beasts. By the time they realized their mistake, it had been too late for most of them. There were still pockets of the resistance to the south. Swift Wind had abandoned those assaults to deal with the more organized threat posed by Lu Sen and his army. Now, he was wondering if he would have been better served to finish off those last remnants of humanity before coming north for this fight. Not that it mattered. There was no cure for regret, and this battle had already started. He could second-guess his choices after he’d dealt a death blow to this army.

For the moment, he’d have to endure the deaths that were mounting. It was painful, but he also knew that cultivators didn’t have an endless reserve of qi. Lu Sen would have to abandon this tactic or bleed himself dry. Based on everything he’d learned about the human cultivator, Swift Wing doubted that the human emperor would do that. Not unless the man believed he could deal a finishing strike. That simply wasn’t possible here. While the lightning could travel along the water, it also turned that water into steam. Before long, those lightning strikes from the sky would only be able to inflict a handful of deaths at a time. The spirit beast army could withstand this level of death until that time came. Not over and over again, but no army could endure that level of attrition forever. His army could do it a few times, though. That should be enough.

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It seemed that Lu Sen had reached a similar conclusion. The working in the sky released one last, appalling strike that cut short the lives of thousands more spirit beasts and then dispersed. For a moment, there was stillness on the battlefield. Swift Wind surveyed the carnage. Even to his jaundiced eye, long accustomed to death, there was no other word for it. Lu Sen was living up to his reputation as the bane of spirit beasts. That made the tiger grind his teeth again. No other human had killed so many of his kind. That alone called for a long, excruciating death. Spirit beasts often hunted and battled each other, but that was their nature. To hunt. To kill. To consume. It was the humans who taught the spirit beasts how to slaughter. It seemed that this Lu Sen had been an attentive student to those lessons. Even so, the spirit beast army was intact.

More importantly, the humans hadn’t been able to entirely divert the water working. The new wall was visibly damaged in places. It would be easy enough to direct attention to those spots. Of course, that too would be costly. Still, there was no getting around it. Defenders always had an advantage in their own dens. The attacker had to accept those losses. It didn’t make it any less infuriating, but once they were through the new wall, the tide would turn. The city’s defenses were pitiful. Swift Wind could have overwhelmed the place in a morning if he’d chosen to. He’d given away that opportunity for this, admittedly, bloodier opportunity. But defeating Lu Sen here and now would effectively ensure victory in the war.

The best part was that he didn’t even need to kill the cultivator. It would be a crushing disappointment if he failed to do so, but it wasn’t a necessity. All he needed to do was deprive the human of most of his mortal army and gathered cultivators. They were the real threat. Once they were gone, it would take far too long for them to replenish those numbers. That would let Swift Wind and his army return to the other side of the mountains where battles still raged. They would assist the Beast King in cleansing the human filth there without concern about what Lu Sen was doing. Then, they would bring the full might of the spirit beasts down on this place and wipe clean the stain of humanity once and for all. Who knew? After this continent, maybe they would travel to the rest of the world. The very idea of a world with no humans warmed Swift Wind’s heart in a way that nothing else could.

That would only come to pass if he did what needed to be done here. Fortunately, the humans weren’t the only ones who could turn an unexpected turn of events to their advantage. While that new wall remained whole, there had been no point in sending burrowing spirit beasts toward it. Now that it was damaged, they could be put to good use. He turned to a wolf that had also undergone the partial transformation into a semi-human form.

“Send the diggers. Then, send the bears in after them. We’ll target the weak places in the wall when the time is right.”

The wolf dipped his head and said, “Yes, Swift Wind.”

As he darted away to issue the commands, the tiger turned to one of his own kin. The tiger-woman eyed him with interest and wariness. He’d had many mates over the long centuries. They’d all proven disappointments to him in the end. He’d ended their lives swiftly, as a merciful compensation for their companionship. The status that came with being his mate was attractive, as was the prospect of bearing powerful young. That had brought more than one female to him, but the distinct possibility of ending up like all his former mates had scared away more than a few. Weak, he thought, but perhaps there is wisdom in knowing one’s own weakness.

“Send another wave at the wall,” he ordered. “I want them focused on what’s happening on the ground, not beneath it. We must distract them from the real threat.”