Chapter 460: Faces of the New Enemy

The assassins lay dead around Omilaena, needles through their bodies. Though she readjusted her dress and noted with satisfaction that it was untouched, it had been closer than she'd want to admit.

The fighting had been over in several tense seconds. If she'd been slightly slower, she would have received some heavy injuries instead of taken out her opponents. Without all her new abilities supporting Lethal Artisan, she couldn't have created metal plates quickly enough to block their needles. And the poison on the cuts that got through was surprisingly potent, reviving her interest in the Purple River sect, even if the Prana Jewels helped eliminate the damage to her.

Of course, this had to be only one of many strikes, and likely just part of the first wave. No one hired assassins this effective without having a real plan... well, maybe some of the young masters did, but so many of them were dead, it seemed likely that the adults were in charge now.

Most likely the other two had been drawn away and similarly attacked, potentially more effectively. In the absence of information, Omilaena didn't want to rush about randomly, since an intelligent enough opponent might have planned for that. But until she had a clear picture of the entire conflict, she needed take action of some sort.

Just as she started to move, Omilaena felt one of the message seeds pulse. She grabbed it immediately, discovered that it wasn't one of those from her partners, and planted it anyway. As soon as the flower grew, Nymidria appeared with her boughs wrapped around her own seed.

"Omilaena? Good." She drew back slightly, still tense. "They know more than we thought: the Dark Crown sect was brought in, along with Sky Souls. This is their major retaliation, we have to-"

All at once her image vanished and the flower began to blacken and decay. When Omilaena checked her other seeds, she saw that they were also dying: someone had finally figured out the chakra method and was taking measures to block it. That limited their communication and split her attention in a new direction.

Never one for indecision, Omilaena grabbed a fallen assassin's flying sword and leapt onto it. Instead of traveling low to the ground, she intentionally soared high overhead. Almost immediately she was noticed by cultivators from the Verdant River sect, who screamed toward her both literally and metaphorically.

They screamed directly into a cloud of poison, resulting in a rain of bodies and swords.

That cloud in the sky only drew more attention to her, but Omilaena was counting on that. She didn't give a fuck about any of the Redtree rebels, which meant the only people in the far south who mattered were Kai and Zin Nim. She would assume they could survive their attacks and join her, so she would head toward Nymidria as quickly as possible and hope they reinforced her in time.

Her decision was only partially based on military strategy, since she lacked so much information. Part of it was just that the dryad matriarch had been a useful ally, the closest thing she'd had to a mentor in many years. Maybe it would be too late to save her and she was already dead, but in any case moving north would help them. Better to be near the Verdant River headquarters and the dryad village instead of the sprawling south with all of its smaller battles.

Something boomed over the horizon and Omilaena double-checked even though she knew what she'd see: of course that brutally fast flight was Kai instead of some floaty or light show cultivator. He tore across the sky after her, catching up despite her top speed, and then kept pace beside her.

"You get attacked?" Omilaena asked casually.

"They bought the Redtree rebels out from under us," he said grimly, "or at least their leaders. I'm not going back to check - if the others were involved, they'd just attack me, and if not, it would just paint a target on them. This seems more serious than some low level cultivators can help with."

"Sounds logical. I received a message from Nymidria before it got cut off, and it sounds like things are changing there. Have you seen Zin Nim?"

"No, but most of the strongest Redtree cultivators are accounted for, so she should be fine."

That was true provided that the enemy hadn't brought in more forces like the Purple River assassins, but Omilaena didn't mention that because she had already made her decision. In any case, she guessed Zin Nim would be closest to the vault in the center, so it would have been harder for them to deploy any dangerous opponents against her.

How long would it take them to reach the Verdant River headquarters? Omilaena realized that the answer would be determined almost entirely by her flight time, because their opponents proved completely ineffective.

When many of the weaker cultivators tried to fly at them, Kai intercepted them with Void Gaze. It looked like he was just trying to freeze their swords out from under them, but many of them coughed up blood anyway. Stronger ones who came from other angles or managed to evade got take down by her needles. Every time a formation tried to build up a large water technique, it was either frozen by her ice or evaporated by his breath.

At this pace it wouldn't take them so long to get back to the sect headquarters, but then Omilaena realized it wouldn't all be that easy. There was an old man standing in the air ahead of them, completely unmoving with his hands behind his back. He made no attempt at a shroud, instead revealing his soul proudly.

<

Name: ???

Total Power: 1254

Cultivation: Sky Soul (925)

Heavenly Cultivation (+100)

Depths Dantian (+100)

Physique: E-0 (80)

Soul Level: 7 (49)

>

He was a reasonably strong Sky Soul with 1250 Power, including advanced cultivation techniques. Either one of a sect's elites or the patriarch of a weaker sect. Omilaena thought that she could take care of him, with Kai beside her, but before they could coordinate, he finally acted.

The old man loosened his hands from behind his back, and in that moment unleashed all the qi he had been building up.

A bright light appeared in the sky as a vast blue sphere plummeted from the heavens. It was targeted directly at them, and when Omilaena tried to redirect their path, the sphere moved to follow. Kai tried to freeze it with Void Gaze and immediately grunted in pain as the strain got to him. They might be able to take this elder in a fair fight, but his ultimate technique was nothing to be trifled with.

As the sphere grew closer and closer, Omilaena hurled a needle, just in case, and it evaporated in the burning qi. She knew that poison would do nothing to it, and Kai was struggling just to keep it at bay. Maybe if they circled around the old man he would call it off, or they could try to reverse direction quickly enough...

Then a small dark form appeared in between them and the molten sphere, robes twisting. Zin Nim struck a palm against the qi, not an elaborate technique but her precise strike. It rang like a bell, a shockwave extended from the impact, and the massive technique fell apart in blue flames.

Immediately Kai switched course to catch up to her and she turned to him, nodding sternly. Staying in the air like this was no longer a safe position, so Omilaena guided them all lower to the ground. She thought that she might be able to dodge between the trees and outposts at this range from the sect headquarters, but they didn't get very far before a giant barrier of qi lit up in front of them.

It was an impressive technique that must be burning an insane amount of qi, to create a barrier that extended from heaven to earth. More troublingly, Omilaena couldn't detect who exactly was generating it. Not the old man who had attacked them... he was keeping at a distance, apparently generating another of those sphere techniques.

And it wasn't the figure who approached them in a purple streak of light, even though he arrested her attention.

Xir Xan Khan resolved in front of them, hands clasped behind his back. All damage to his robes had been repaired and he faced them with a cold gaze, completely unconcerned despite the fact that he had lost the previous time.

<

Name: Xir Xan Khan

Total Power: 1529

Cultivation: Sky Soul (1000)

Physique: E-0 (80)

Heavenly Body (+100)

Immortal Body (+200)

Soul Level: 7 (49)

Coiling Presence (+100)

>

Worse, his confidence wasn't misplaced. It looked like, in addition to other measures, he had taken the maximum amount of the immortality elixir she thought was possible, shooting his Power up to over 1500. The fact that he might have limited his future growth wasn't much comfort when he was strong enough to potentially go toe-to-toe with Kai.

"I see you still haven't purified yourself," Xir Xan Khan said to Zin Nim, as if the rest of them didn't exist. "Well, that will soon be corrected. Last time you won via superior allies, so I took measures to correct that error."

"I want nothing to do with you," Zin Nim spat, but she was no longer looking so confident.

Then, just when Omilaena thought things couldn't get worse, she saw threads slide through the corner of her vision. There was no attempt to hide or ambush, the man simply walked up from another direction, removing another path forward. The ragged cloak swirled, partially obscuring the wrapped figure underneath.

"I thought that sounded like you," Jackal Thirteen told her. "They've already given me an interesting payment, but you'd be the real prize."

<

Name: Jackal Thirteen

Total Power: 1380

Cultivation: Sky Soul (910)

Demonic Threads (+106)

Physique Level: D-0 (200)

Immortal Body (+100)

Soul Level: 8 (64)

>

He was substantially stronger too, enhanced by a lesser dose of the immortality elixir as well as his own advancement. Based on her speculations about the remaining stores of elixir, the Masterful Crown clan had decided to pull out all the stops in this attack, which meant that the other forces she had yet to detect were likely elites or patriarchs.

But they wouldn't matter, if she couldn't get past Jackal Thirteen. He might not be the strongest on the battlefield, but he had edged ahead of her in strength, and the worst part was that he usually punched above his weight thanks to the puppets he carried with him.

The bodies began to form up behind him and everyone on the battlefield moved at once.