The sky above the Southern Cloud Mountains smelled of sulfur and burnt metal.
Fifty Blood War Skiffs circled Clear Sky Sect like black vultures. Corpse-fire catapults hurled burning pitch and rotten bone at the blue shell of the Nine-Peaks Mountain Barrier.
BOOM. CRACK. BOOM.
The ancient ward groaned under every hit. Shock waves tore old pines from the ground. Cracks spread across the blue dome from one peak to the next.
On the Nether-Dragon Flagship, Patriarch Nether-Ghost leaned over the dragon-bone prow. His scarlet robes snapped in the hot wind, and green corpse fire burned in his eyes.
“FIRE THE NINE-NETHER CANNON!” He struck the deck with his bone staff. “Break their shell and kill every elder inside!”
WHUUUU—THUMP.
The dragon skull at the flagship’s prow opened its jaws. A thirty-foot column of blood-red fire burst out and struck the top of the barrier.
The formation bent inward, then shattered.
Millions of blue spirit fragments rained across the sect. They cut through tiled roofs and bamboo groves before hissing into the streams.
“THE BARRIER IS DOWN!”
Three thousand demonic warriors leaped from the ships on ghost bats, bone gliders, and flying blades. They dropped into the lower courtyards like a swarm.
At the Heavenly Sword Pavilion, Elder Mu Chen stood his ground.
Green Peak Golden Core fire blazed around him. He kicked his huge bronze cauldron into the air, sending it through the keel of an oncoming skiff.
CRUNCH.
The ship broke apart. Its wreck struck a second vessel, and both crashed into the forest below.
“COME ON, YOU HYENAS!” Mu Chen spat blood into the dirt. “WHO WANTS THE NEXT TASTE?”
He was powerful, but he was badly outnumbered. The Blood Wolf Sect had brought fifty warships, twenty Golden Core commanders, and three thousand killers. The sky filled with arrows.
Nether-Ghost watched from his flagship and flicked one skeletal hand.
A hundred-yard claw of blood qi plunged through the clouds. It passed Mu Chen and struck Sect Master Gu Qing in the chest.
CRACK.
Gu Qing’s sword barrier shattered. He flew forty yards and hit a granite memorial pillar. Dark blood spilled onto his violet robes as he collapsed.
“Sect Master!” Chief Elder Zhao knocked five poisoned javelins aside and pulled him upright. “The outer courtyards are lost! We have already lost forty disciples. We cannot hold this ridge!”
Gu Qing clutched his broken ribs and looked around. Smoke rose from the herb gardens. The old library was burning. Screams echoed from the residential caves. Above him, thirty more warships circled.
Then he looked west.
Sunset Peak stood clean and quiet in the sunlight. No smoke. No ghost bats. Only calm pines and the distant tap of a wooden mallet.
A desperate idea lit Gu Qing’s eyes.
“Sound the retreat,” he gasped, gripping Zhao’s collar. “Take the wounded to Sunset Peak. Its defenses are our last shelter.”
Zhao stared at him. “We swore never to disturb the Senior’s seclusion!”
“Then ask for help. I will not leave our juniors to die for the sake of good manners.”
Elder Mu brought his cauldron down between them and the pursuing arrows. “SOUND THE HORN! HELP THE WOUNDED WEST!”
TOOOOOOOT.
The retreat horn sounded.
Two hundred bloodied survivors broke formation and ran west. Wounded apprentices, limping deacons, and terrified elders scrambled up the narrow mountain paths with the demonic vanguard close behind.
Gu Qing ran near the rear, one hand pressed to his ribs.
“Carry anyone who cannot walk!” he shouted through the sect’s communication array. “Do not abandon the rear guard!”
***
Three fast Blood War Skiffs led the pursuit, skimming fifty feet above the treetops.
Captain Sha Yan commanded the lead ship. Snake tattoos covered his Early Golden Core face, and his teeth were filed to points. He chewed betel nut and spat red juice onto the deck.
“Look at the noble Clear Sky dogs!” he laughed. “They’re running up a dead-end ridge! Full speed! Ram the stragglers!”
The three ships accelerated to eighty miles per hour, their iron rams clipping the tops of pines.
Ahead, the forest opened onto Sunset Peak.
Sha Yan expected a fortress or an escape formation. Instead, he saw a small pine cabin, a chicken coop, and a neat vegetable garden. A smooth black courtyard stretched before the porch.
In the red dirt knelt a skinny young man in faded hemp. He held a folding ruler and a spool of string, with a pencil behind one ear. He tapped a pine stake into the ground and checked the line like a tired carpenter.
Sha Yan laughed so hard that his archers jumped.
“A cabbage farmer! Gu Qing ran five miles to hide behind a ditch digger!”
His smile turned cruel.
“Drop the anchor! Full chain! Drag it through his garden and tear that coop apart!”
CLANK-CLANK!
A two-ton iron anchor fell from the ship on a heavy chain.
CRACK-THUMP.
Its flukes struck the mountainside. At eighty miles per hour, the anchor plowed a five-foot trench through turf and stone. Dirt and broken roots flew thirty feet into the air as it raced straight toward Austin’s stakes, his string line, and a garden bed graded to a quarter inch.