Another Elder signaled the start of the contest and Shen grabbed a core from the box beside her. She had been given half of the formation paint the sect had available, several new paint brushes in case she needed them and a box of cores, and could grab another box of cores if needed.
First, Shen started off simple. Maybe if her enemy saw this he would underestimate her. The only modification she made to the formation was to add a few seconds of delay before the effect started, so that the risk of those throwing the grenades injuring themselves or allies from it exploding beside them was decreased. The first three elements, Fire, Earth, and Metal were quickly finished, and she sat her third core relic on the drying rack about half a second before Elder Xu. Water was a bit more difficult for her to work with, though, so she lost about ten second when making its grenade.
Then came Wood. For this she needed two formations. The first used a tiny bit of the core’s chi, about one percent to form a slight bit of Fire. The second used the remaining chi to create a burst of Wood chi, feeding it into the fire to amplify its effect. This made it slower to produce than Master Xu’s version, which simply spread the Wood chi over an area and make the spirit plant seed grow inside them, but it would cause more immediate damage.
She made several more of each type, slowly catching up on the Fire, Earth, and Metal cores but getting behind on the other two. After thirty minutes she started to pull ahead again, getting so used to process that even the Water one, the fourth in her sequence, took less time than him on the fourth in his sequence, but was getting bored. She had never been good at mass producing items, as she preferred to do something new and experiment with her items. So, rather than press her advantage, the next time she made a Fire core, she slightly modified the trigger. Instead of having a delay it had a false divine sense, and if it detected another core near itself after activating, it would trigger the effect.
She had realized two important facts while working with the cores and thinking about her experience with them. First, while not all of the demons had Cores, no member of the sect did. That meant that if she kept the other salvaged cores away from them, these cores would only explode when demons or some spirit beasts got near them. She would have to warn Sho, Do, and those with pet spirit beasts to stay away from them after they were activated, as she wasn’t sure if their cores would trigger it, but most of the sect could freely travel through the area.
Second, she had been able to detect the spy’s core with her divine sense. That meant that he hadn’t protected his core from being detected by her, even if he could. Shen doubted that the other demon soldiers did or even could protect their own. That meant that, aside from the use of Nascent Soul level barriers, which couldn’t be penetrated by Divine Sense, the Foundation rank barrier only blocking effects, the demons likely couldn’t block the detection.
After creating her first batch she started to get used to them, speeding up, but she was still slightly slower than Elder Xu, and started to get behind. Still, she was getting bored and losing her concentration, so she had to switch formation. This time she changed it to a simple proximity based trigger. Anything above Gathering, meaning the entire demon force other than a few captured human slaves, which got close to it would set it off. This also included any barrier which blocked the detection, as only a Nascent level and above barrier could do that. These would be her answer to the demons sending Nascent Soul troops through to attack them, though the Foundation level explosion would likely do little to no damage to a Nascent level cultivator.
Eventually Shen reached for another core and found that her box was empty. They had been getting refilled faster than she could use them, so she looked away to see if her replacements were delayed. Elder Xu had already put down his paint brush, though, and there were no other cores left which didn’t contain a formation.
Shen realized that she was almost out of chi of every type and that the sun had set, the area only being lit by a series of light talismans that were stuck to the walls of the competition area. She put her brush in a cup of water to rinse it out, then sighed.
Now that the contest was finished, the results were being tallied up. Elder Xu had produced 517 cores, while Shen had made 503. Furthermore, 17 of Shen’s would need to be repaired due to the lines being smudged, but only three of Master Xu’s, resulting in him having a score of 511, and Shen having a score of 469. After Elder Xu was declared the winner, they bowed at each other and picked up their defective products so that they could be repaired. Once that was complete, Shen cleaned up and stored everything. She would be allowed to keep all of the materials she was given for the competition, but had used more than 90% of them already.
Shen stood up and stretched, then they examined each other’s work. Master Xu was impressed with her variety and the ideas of giving them triggers which set them off, as it allowed an additional safety feature. Shen, on the other hand, had him explain several of the modifications he made to the standard array as well as Nascent level formation components. Though he couldn’t explain them well enough for Shen to create Nascent level relics, as she hadn’t yet advanced to Nascent and therefore couldn’t fully understand how they worked, she was able to learn much about how such devices functioned.
After the discussion was over, Shen got up to leave when two young men ran over to her. They were the twins that worked for her, Lao and Su. They introduced themselves to Elder Xu and said that they were impressed by his craftsmanship before asking if they could help him. Apparently they had realized that, while his formations were Nascent Soul ranked, they lacked a soul fragment necessary to make them work to their full potential. Elder Xu was going to imbue them with the souls of animals once he had rested, as he could break off at most one hundred fragments from his own soul without risking permanent injury or death, so they asked if they could aid him in finding those animals. He agreed and they left to start looking.
Theoretically they could have captured the souls of the demons, humans, or spirit beasts that died in the battle and handed them over, but they didn’t wish to use the soul of a sapient being for something which would destroy the soul fragment upon detonation to amplify the effect. Instead, they had been using what knowledge they had to communicate with the dead sect members, mercenaries, and spirit beasts to ask them to defend this city. They had hoped to turn the city into another Spirit Realm, but they lacked the strength to do so. The best they had managed was to get a few spirits to delay their trip to the river of reincarnation in order to protect against the dead demons, who may attempt to fight them even after death. So now the twins were going to try and use their abilities to find any animals with a soul within the city and bring them to Elder Xu so that he could make them into weapons.
Shen could have helped them, as they had taught her to sense souls earlier, but decided to go check on Mr. Li first. She left for the clinic and, a few minutes later saw Shoom laying beside him. He appeared to be awake, but his movements were very slow, as if he had no energy. She ran over to him. “Mr. Li.” she said, kneeling. “You’re awake.”
Mr. Li coughed weakly. “Not for long. My vital chi is leaving me, so I only have a few minutes at most.” With a good bit of effort he lifted his hand and put it on Shoom’s head, petting him slightly. “I’m sorry that I can’t raise you like I wanted, but this nice girl is going to look after you now, okay?” Shoom looked sad, and Mr. Li looked at Shen. “I hate to do this to a girl who isn’t even an adult yet, but I need you to look after my son for me. He likes you, and I know you two get along. Can you please do that for me?” He looked at Shoom. “I was going to adopt you once you could take human form. I’m sorry I didn’t get to officially make you my son.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Shoom started whimpering, and Shen nodded. “You can count on me, sir. I’ll look after your son for you.”
Mr. Li nodded, then closed his eyes. Shen sent her divine sense into him to see if he was ok, but felt something leave him, like a form of chi, but somehow it was also him, as if the concept it contained was him, his entire self. A few seconds later she felt his soul disconnect from his body and start to float away. Somehow Shoom sensed what was happening as well and started to howl. Shen wrapped her arms around Shoom’s neck and a few minutes later he went from howling to whimpering again. Shen could feel that in all of the combat he had developed his divine sense enough that he was now Early Foundation, the same way her battles on the wall had elevated her to Middle Foundation, so he was now like a small child, maybe a seven year old. And he had just watched his father die.
She wanted to leave the area, but the force of the head of a wolf that weighed four times as much as you in your lap made it hard to move. Some of the doctors, including Mae, came over and noticed that Mr. Li was dead. Mae came over and gave Shen a hug. “Thanks,” said Shen, “but we weren’t that close. He’s the one that lost a father.” She started petting Shoom’s head.
Mae nodded. “In that case, we’ll move him out of here.” she said, and went to the other side of the bed to help them lift the mattress. A minute later, Shoom had stopped whimpering and just looked depressed. The doctors brought over another bed and Shen stood up. “Come on, Shoom. Let’s go find someone for you to play with.
Shoom didn’t want to play right now, but he followed Shen anyway. She returned to the outer city where people were doing something with wood boxes full of gold colored balls, and Shoom smelled someone familiar. It took him a few minutes to remember, but he seemed to have met them somewhere else. Shen had taken him to another town, and those two were there along with some other reptile kids that he could play with.
“Sho, Do.” Shen said excitedly. “I didn’t know you would be here.” Shoom and Shen walked over to them.
“Well, we are kind of patrolling the wall, seeing if we can help with anything.” Sho motioned to the boxes of Cores. “I take it you got those from the demons that broke in?”
“Yeah,” Shen said. “We turned them into explosives, and are going to use them when the demons decide to attack again.”
As they talked about what to do with the balls, something Shoom didn’t care about, the younger reptile came over to talk to him. “Hey. Shoom, right?” the boy said, injecting some of his Water into Shoom. Shoom injected some of his Ice into the boy and nodded. ‘Can you do telepathy yet?’ the boy’s voice said in his head, and Shoom was surprised. “I guess not.” the boy said, then he got the attention of the reptile woman. “Hey, Sho, can I go try and teach Shoom telepathy? That way we can speak better.”
The Reptile woman, Sho, shrugged. Shoom thought that meant that she wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t sure about that. “If you want. Shen? Do you mind?”
Shen shook her head. “I don’t care. I was going to teach him at some point. Not sure if he’s able to learn Shifting yet, but if you think you can teach him, feel free to.”
“Oh, Do isn’t Foundation yet, so his form of shifting isn’t real shifting.” Sho said. “Here.” She touched Shoom’s head and he could feel something squirm in his brain. “Normally, spirit beasts naturally become aware of the ancestral memories of the Shifting technique, but I helped remind him and taught him a few tricks my ancestors didn’t know which make it easier.”
“If you can do that, why not just do that with me?” asked Shen.
“That specific method doesn’t work with humans or normal animals, just Spirit Beasts.” said Sho. “Something about the natural chi sense both dragons and they have, but I don’t know the details. I gave you the book, though, so you should be able to learn it from that, it just won’t feel instinctive. I can teach you the text telepathically if you want, but it will just be like you memorized it or copied it from a jade slip.”
Shoom licked her hand in thanks after realizing that she taught him something, and followed the younger reptile to a field somewhere, leaving Shen and the reptile woman to talk about the gold balls. They went somewhere with a few circles painted on the ground, and Shoom could feel that energy coming from them, really strong energy. The Water it put off was more Water than the boy’s Water.
“Ok, I need you to lay down and close your eyes, then do what I say. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, just tap your paw on the ground and I’ll try and say it a different way. If that goes on for too long, I might have to look at your mind to see what’s confusing you, but I’ll try not to do that if I don’t have to.”
For the next hour Shoom laid there, listening to Do’s explanation. He kept practicing, occasionally getting confused and having to have reptile boy explain it again, but eventually he seemed to get it. ‘You hear, Reptile?” Shoom asked, and Do nodded.
“It was pretty quiet, but I heard. It’s rude to call Dragons reptiles, though. Some of them get mad if you do, thinking you are insulting them.”
‘but you reptile.’
“And you are a mammal. But I don’t call you ‘mammal’, I call you Shoom, because that’s your name. So please use my name. Or at least say ‘dragon’ instead.”
‘ok, mister rep...I mean mr. dragon.”
“That’s better, and louder, but you can call me Do if you want. Now that you’ve learned it, though, let’s go back to others. They might need us to help with something.”
‘Back to Shen and Reptile woman? I mean Dragon Woman?’
“Her name is Sho, but yes.” They stood up and walked back to where the girls were.
Sho and Shen had been busy walking around the barrier. Shen had laid her Sensor explosives around the inside of the barrier anywhere there were downed sections of the outer wall. She didn’t activate them yet, as Sho was near them and she didn’t know if they would be set off by Sho’s Dragon Core, but she could activate them after they were all buried in a grid pattern. On the inside of those, near the wall, Shen laid two lines of the proximity ones. That way, if the Nascent Soul demons made it past the others she could still hopefully hurt them.
The twins had managed to find 37 animals, from worms and insects and birds to one stray cat that wasn’t a spirit beast or even a false spirit beast, which had a soul. All of these were taken to Elder Xu, who pulled out their souls and transferred them into an explosive. Those 37 were handed out to elders who were watching the different wall breaches in case the demons tried to enter through those places. He managed to take 81 tiny shards of his own soul and place them in another 81 explosives, then placed those in his ring. They would allow him to do massive damage for very little chi usage. The rest of the explosives were given to the people defending the walls. After that, he went to meditate. His soul was weak from creating that many fragments, and he needed to repair it.
When she was done setting up the last of the fields, Shen had Sho return inside the wall and started activating all of the explosives. They then made another lap around the city, Sho staying inside the walls, and Shen going out to activate the explosives, then took a break.
Two hours later Shen was taking a nap when she heard the barrier crack. The demons had been bombarding them constantly for the last five hours, but now that the sun was starting to rise they must be making a serious push. Thankfully all of Shen’s chi had been restored, so she ran towards the courtyard just inside the main gate where she had helped push the demons out. Something large hit the barrier, probably a false Early Immortal attack if she had to guess, and the shield cracked, causing huge pieces of it to fall off before dissolving.
“Get Ready!” Elder Xu said, then a few seconds later several explosions occurred outside the city which were several times what one would expect from a Foundation attack, but varied wildly in size. Shen knew this was likely because the demons had already used most to the chi in their cores before dying, and the natural regeneration of the core wasn’t the same between them. Unfortunately, the sect members hadn’t been able to restore the chi inside of the cores due to not having any spare formations here which could be used. They could always have a cultivator store their own energy inside, but these cores could store as much as a Nascent Soul Elder’s dantian, if not more, so Shen wouldn’t have been able to recharge one on her own.
Several thousand demons swarmed each of the breaches, and hundreds of explosions went off, killing over half of them. The rest, however, managed to make it through by stepping over the corpses of their comrades. Shen and Shoom attacked them along with a thousand remaining sect members, but the roughly equal numbers of troops on each side meant that the sect was at a disadvantage, as their troops had inferior skills.
After ten minutes of fighting, when most of the outer disciples were growing too tired to continue fighting, High Elders Xu called for a retreat to the inner city. Once an area of the field had no sect members left in it, he threw three of the Nascent Explosives he had created into the group. There were three massive explosions, each large enough to kill everyone within twenty heights of where it exploded, and leave large craters in the ground. Shen threw a few fire balls into the group of demons which were trying to follow the fleeing fighters and killed or injured another dozen, but because Shoom was injured she soon followed the others.
