Chapter 50

A\N: Chapter 49 got a pretty big edit to the second and third section.

It took two hours to recover my spent qi sitting on the road. The quality and amount of storm qi and its component parts overwhelmed almost all others, choking the void qi out of the air. While I cultivated, I felt Littlebird grow increasingly uncomfortable and distressed. I needed to do something about it.

There wasn’t time to investigate the egg after my return from the Savage Expanse; I was mostly waiting for it to hatch, but exposed to the elements, it was growing cold.

I pulled off the scraps of the bag I had carried with me. There was just enough rough canvas fabric to make a makeshift sling. In the dry interior of the road that crossed the Stormwall, I fashioned a sling to hold Littlebird inside my robe, near my chest where he would be warmest before tying the string back around myself. I washed the mud from my face where I could, cupping my hands in the rain for water.

Littlebird’s egg felt more comfortable over our connection. But I didn’t know if it would be enough, nor how long the journey would be on foot. I had to do something more. So I sat back down and focused on our connection.

[Anti-Light Roc Egg]

[A spirit bound egg tied to Feng Sai. It contains the remnant consciousness of a Titan level entity with an embryonic perfected body. This egg is feeding off of its connection to Feng Sai’s power. Time until hatching: 8 days.]

I wondered if I could hatch it faster. It was taking in a trickle of my power, but what if I fed it more? I pushed on the connection between us, gently and experimentally at first, moving my qi toward it. There was an intense alarm in the connection, then it calmed. The egg felt warmer against my chest. I slowly ramped up the qi flowing through the connection, waiting for Littlebird to show a sign of distress. Eventually, I was able to feed in four times as much power to the connection.

Littlebird felt almost as if he were asleep across the connection, not quite fully aware. The outflux of qi significant. But it was worth it.

[Time until hatching: 2 days.]

“Can you hold on for two days?” I asked, putting a hand to my chest. A feeling of assent echoed across the connection between our cultivation.

I stood and cycled the Anti-Light movement technique, shooting down the road.

With the extra drain on my qi, I continued on until I felt that only a third of my qi remained before stopping to pull the qi back in. The road here was enormous, an undertaking of labor at baffling scale. Very rarely, other roads intersected with this one, leading away into the dark. Without my compass, I could only follow the road south.

The location of the Storm Temple must have been nearer the ruins of the Heavenly Cloud. The remnants of buildings were visible along the road. At one point, I passed an entire town of stone buildings overgrown by trees and half buried in mud.

 I only wondered why Wen hadn’t caught up with me. I worried I overestimated the Outer Disciple’s necessary cultivation. Or worse, the Grim Tempest may have sealed his cultivation, and he could only truly express the power of the Third Realm. But turning back wouldn’t help him. I continued on.

The road frequently featured piles of rubble and broken sections of canopy. There were even slapjob repairs at some sections. But it took most of an entire day before I came across the first obstruction. It wasn’t an unrepaired, collapsed section of bridge. Nor was it a mudslide from a mountain, as I had imagined on the trip here.

[Stormgate Trapdoor Spider Nest]

[The nest of an insectoid Spiritbeast]

There was no way around it. I couldn’t risk the side roads. Worse, I couldn’t take any hit to the chest without risking Littlebird. The yellow lights embedded in the road revealed a monstrous, many legged shape behind layers of gray webbing; it was the silhouette of a monster projected through thin curtains. It was probably the same size as the boar. The nest was almost comically large for it, stretching across the entire road.

Shaping the Anti-Lightning movement technique and freeing my sword, I took a step forward. I watched and waited, experimenting with how close I could get. The spider didn’t react. I focused it on carefully, using [Identify] on the shape behind the webbing, rather than the webbing itself.

[Male Stormgate Trapdoor Spider, Second Realm Water/Ice Spiritbeast]

[A Spiritbeast evolved as an ambush predator in the merciless wilds. Semi-aquatic. The Male Trapdoor spider is a homemaker, a docile and peaceful spirit beast much smaller than their wives. The male spider never travels very far from the wife.]

My eyes widened. I kicked backward several feet.

A gigantic chitin leg with a hooked end stabbed into the road, then another, as a spider four times the size of the smaller one crawled up from around the bridge. The ground sizzled from acid that leaked as the monster rubbed her two fangs together.

[Stormgate Trapdoor Spider Matriarch, Third Realm Water/Acid Spiritbeast]

[The Stormgate Trapdoor Matriarch hunts and provides for a harem of Male Stormgate spiders. This one is half starved and only has a single harem member left. It ate the rest.]

I scanned it quickly, looking for weaknesses. My enhanced intelligence helped. I had hunted dozens of Spiritbeasts, but they were all much weaker and more familiar. I had never hunted an insectoid spiritbeast.

But I had hunted Sandshears, and I saw where the monster’s chitin plates ended, revealing joints that connected its legs together.

I attacked first, shooting forward. The smell of burning flesh overtook the rain as I cut clean through one of the monster’s joins, a chitin leg hitting the ground. The spider reacted quickly, stabbing downward with its fangs.

I met it with [Stormbreak Riposte.] The acid dripping from its fang’s sizzled away as it met the black lightning dancing at the edge of my blade.

[Stormbreak Riposte reached level 6!]

It let out a screech, stumbling to rebalance its weight on seven legs. I spun forward, severing a second leg, then a third. The monster tilted unsteadily.

One of its legs rushed toward my chest, where Littlebird’s egg was. I spun backward, dodging. The spider tilted back, moving towards nest. I chased, hacking away.

After I cut away four of its legs, it fell pitifully, screeching on the ground. I stabbed my sword through its head.

I was panting. The rush of my own heart and the roar of the rain was all I could hear. My qi reserves were depleted. Poking at the connection between me and Littelbird, I received a sense of comfort in return.

[You have reached level 33!]

Exhaustion began to set in from the day. It was still too soon. I had one more monster to kill. I walked toward the nest. The spider shot out of it, running toward the edge of the town, but I dashed forward, stabbing into it.

It really had tried to just run away.

I had to keep moving until I found somewhere to camp. A thought crossed my mind as I began to cut away the webbing of the nest. This was a territory controlled by a relatively powerful monster. In the Lower Third realm, I should have had trouble killing it. It was only easy due to my massively enhanced physique because of my stats.

In fact, most things here should have had trouble killing it. Which gave me a stray thought; no other Spiritbeast was likely to intrude on the spider’s territory. I looked at the corpse of the spider. Then back at the nest. I poked the web experimentally. It felt like fabric, bouncing away from my hand.

I started cutting the webbing more intentionally.

***

Wen stared in disbelief as Sai made a hammock out of spider web. He sat on his sword, floating hundreds of feet into the air. A perfect bubble stretched around him where no rain fell. His face twitched as he saw movement at the edge of the forest.

Wen made a slashing motion with his fingers. A blade of storm empowered wind fell silently to the forest. It was invisible to a lower realm cultivator through the veil of the rain, and another corpse joined the pile. The Spiritbeast horde dissipating had sent an endless tide of monsters outward.

The Spiritbeasts were unrelated to Feng Sai. And they weren’t getting near him. So, technically, Wen wasn’t protecting him. The sect would know that he channeled qi through his sword to fly. He would get an earful for it later.

His punishment would likely be offset for raising such a talented cultivator. The cultivator was just another tithe the Feng dynasty paid to the Grim Tempest. Wen dreaded what would happen once Sai won the tournament.

He could see flickers of the person Sai was raised to be. Scars from his upbringing showing through. The person who had executed a bandit without a second question, running a sword through his eye, the imperious noble cultivator who could rule a nation with an iron fist, the righteous Scion of the Grim Tempest.

And then there was the Sai that was willing to sleep in a bed of spider webbing, who would pass through a city without demanding its governor bow, and who would cross the wilds alone without an entourage of a dozen to tend to his every need.

Wen turned an eye back down the road. Miles and miles away, the Omen Alligator pursued Sai, not stopping to rest. Every time Sai used his movement technique, he traveled farther away. And everytime Sai rested, the Alligator started to catch up. Then, behind him, there was that bandit. Those were all Sai’s responsibility.

Wen believed he could handle them. And once Sai killed the Raindshadow’s psuedo-patriarch, they’d have new mounts to continue riding south.