50. Battle for Atla Pt. 1

  The Peach Blossoms were whole once more, missing only the gaping wound of the First Disciple who had passed into his next life. With the North Star Guiding Formation empowering them each, causing them to reach a gestalt that allowed them to stand upon the vanguard with their master, they fought.

  Empowered not only by their bond, but feeling the world itself reach out to them and supply them with a nearly endless supply of Qi, they fought.

  With grim determination born of the anger of seeing one third of the city washed away by the flames of hell, unleashed by the enemy leader, they fought.

  Hien Ro had been feeling listless that morning. He had enjoyed the previous day with his family, but, once the girls had gone to bed and he had retired to bed with his wife, he had sent his happy contentment away to the tyrant of another dimension as payment for a Faustian deal.

  Now those girls were in danger. While they were not in the part of the destroyed city, they would be screaming and crying out for protection, and he would give this battle his all. With emotions soaring to unprecedented heights, he screamed and unleashed fiery hell upon the diamond ranked attackers, even as his techniques were blocked or countered.

  For every nine that were turned aside, however, one proved to find a weakness in the invader’s defenses, scorching and burning. The foes, realizing that Hien Ro was a potent threat, marked him for isolation, sending one of their kill squads after him.

  Four Diamond Ranked oppressors zeroed in on him, flying at him with a diamond-formation. Knowing what was coming by their auras, Hien Ro gathered his strength, pulling strongly on his bonds through the North Star Guiding Formation.

  The kill squad formed a pyramid around him, then activated a technique which created a shield, cutting him off from the environment. The pyramid remained in place as they charged towards its center, determined to end this quickly.

  Each of the squad members were of the diamond rank. Hien Ro himself had recently attained that power, but it was fresh and new to him. Empowered by the formation, he conjured a blade of magma and met the leader of the enemy in a fiery clash.

  The foe utilized a cursed blade, and the moment that the first strike got through Hien Ro’s defenses it would cause his flesh to rot.

  From the side, a second enemy cultivator utilized a poisoned spear. One strike from that weapon would cause even a diamond ranked cultivator’s blood to coagulate. She danced behind her leader, striking like a cobra at any opportunities that presented themselves.

  The third foe was an archer, and he held back in the distance, launching attacks that kept Hien Ro distracted with arrows of insidious Qi that would burrow into his meridians and weaken him, turning his own Qi virulent and chaotic.

  The final member of the kill squad was an intermediate ranged fighter, utilizing shadowflame whips to restrict Hien Ro’s movements.

  Together they were confident that even this abnormally powerful diamond rank threat would be easily overcome. His path would end today, just as so many others had fallen before their teamwork.

  Hien Ro was put on the back foot, forced to avoid the furious onslaught of the cursed sword fighter and the sudden strikes by the spear wielder. The shadowflame whip caught his left hand, and he burned it away with his own flames, but it delayed him long enough for a Qi arrow to strike him in the side. He burned that away too, but it cost him.

  The battle continued, and each of the squad members landed blows with their cursed and insidious weapons. Hien Ro’s determination did not fail, but his body began to. He roared in defiance, refusing to die.

  At that moment, the pyramid was rocked by a sudden impact, and the barrier was shattered. The archer gasped, looking down at his chest, where the trident head of an earthen spear was impaling him from behind.

  “Ro! I am here! Lukal Lukal fights by your side!” the roud-faced warrior bellowed.

  “Thanks for the assistance,” Hien Ro said, coughing. “Watch their weapons, they’re all poisoned or something.”

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  “I see. We fight cowards,” Lukal Lukal said.

  “Indeed,” Hien Ro agreed.

  The kill squad leader tsked as their archer fell to the earth, the light of life faded from their eyes. It would take weeks to find a suitable replacement, but it wasn’t the first time he’d lost a member. “Kill the interloper,” he shouted to the others while he focused on the primary threat.

  The injured Hien Ro faced off against the cursed-blade wielding leader while the spear wielding enemy faced off against Lukal Lukal, with the shadowflame whips lashing out at both of the allies.

  Lukal Lukal had been holding back his own advancement to diamond rank in order to enter the coliseum as a gold-ranked contender. Now, in the heat of battle, he undid the shackles that he’d placed on his cultivation, and with the overwhelming presence of the Qi of Atla washing over him, he advanced in the midst of combat.

  The furious blows of his spear, empowered by a diamond ranked combatant breaking through and the weight of the North Star Guiding formation, slowly overcame the defenses of the spear-wielding assassin. He landed a thrust in her left thigh, and then her left eye, and she too fell to the earth, lifeless.

  The captain of the kill squad tsked again, then signaled a retreat to his remaining ally. They flew away, only to gasp in surprise as their flesh was suddenly burnt away by a technique empowered by a power beyond diamond rank.

  They turned just in time to see the practitioner, Thaseus Dios, as he held his bamboo sword before him.

  “Fields of Ash,” he said, and the last of the kill squad’s flesh turned to dust.

  The two members of the Peach Blossoms who had rushed to Hien Ro’s aid caught him before he too fell to the earth. He was struggling, overcome with passion, determined to continue the fight, but Lukal Lukal smacked him upside the head.

  “You are injured and have two daughters to survive the fight for. Go find a healer!” Lukal Lukal shouted at him.

  His words got through the battle fervor, and Hien Ro took out a device. He pressed a button, and a moment later he was calm. “You are right,” he said in a voice that betrayed none of his previous passion. “I shall support the formation from the back until I am healed.”

  “Just go,” Thaseus said, and he turned back to the rest of the battle, searching for a place to rush to the aid of a defender in need.

  Hien Ro flew to one of the many aid stations to see his wounds treated. An hour later, he returned to the front lines, his wounds healed and his passion returned.

  ~~~~~~

  “It’s been a while since we’ve been linked with the others,” Lahri said. She saw a moment where one of the enemies was focused entirely upon an attack, leaving him open. She exploited it, pulling on the bonds not just of her dao companions but the entirety of the North Start Guiding Formation to perform a sneak attack of her own.

  She gripped the water in the enemy’s blood and ripped it out of him. He screamed, briefly, and the results were quite messy. One less foe on the battlefield, she thought as the mess fell to splatter on the ground below.

  “I wish it were under happier circumstances,” Farun said, and he saw another opening. He pulled on the entirety of the formation, just as Lahri had a moment earlier, and the formation answered. He sent out a lance of flame that was so brightly white that it hurt the eye to look at. It pierced through a diamond rankers heart, and the enemy had just a moment to stare down in shock, then up at the companions, before he died.

  “Let’s show them how far we have come together,” Farun suggested. He too pulled upon the formation, pulling far more and for longer than his two companions. Below him, in the jungle, the earth moved .

  He pulled forth a mass of dirt and plant life, the rocks reshaping and the plants growing rapidly as it took the form of an earthen dragon. The companions sat on the dragons head and charged together fearless into the battle.

  They did not believe they were invincible. Like all of the other companions, when they were linked together in their entirety, they felt the gaping wound in their formation that was the absence of Xol, the First Disciple. But they felt that pain all of the time, and they had made it their own.

  Let death come. They would face it together.

  On the back of a massive dragon, the dao companions faced the enemies of Atla without fear. The worst that could happen was that they were reunited with the First Disciple, and there would be great joy in that reunion.

  The Dragon roared, and the heavens continued to shake.

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