The sunken dirt track of the Old Imperial Highway fell deathly silent for three long heartbeats. He was broken only by the dry hiss of limestone dust stirred by the mountain wind.
Sixty Red-Scar Bandits stood frozen in their tracks, their scimitars, barbed hooks, and loaded horn bows poised in mid-air. Across the rutted road, twenty wounded caravan guards clutched their battered bronze shields, their knuckles white with tension as they blinked in total, dumbfounded confusion at the creature that had plummeted from the pine branches.
Patriarch Lu Feng remained huddled against the massive cedar wheel of the lead spirit-ox wagon, his brass glasses askew on the bridge of his nose, his chest heaving with shallow, ragged breaths. He stared at the blue sphere resting on the dirt between him and the outlaws.
The creature was roughly two feet in width, a semi-clear sphere of vibrant sapphire jelly. Through its crystal-clear outer mass, the afternoon sunlight refracted into delicate threads of golden sky light, swirling lazily around a dense, radiant core at its exact center. Two curved white crescent markings on its front shifted into curious, friendly arches. It possessed no claws, no fangs, no scales, and no murderous aura. It looked utterly harmless. More like a giant confection made of crystal-hardened sugar water by a royal confectioner than any known hunting beast of the Grand Desolate Forest.
“What are you standing around staring for?” the bandit chieftain bellowed, his scarred face contorting into an ugly shade of purple as his out-of-joint shoulder throbbed with white-hot pain. He kicked the dirt, shoving his surviving lieutenant forward with his good arm. “It’s just a mutant water toad! A twisted puddle of pond slime! Chop it into fish paste! Kill the oxen and take the carts!”
The bandit lieutenant, an imposing brute with a braided beard and thick bronze bracers, shook off his pause. With a savage snarl, he raised his heavy serrated broadsword with both hands, channeling all his late Qi Gathering training into an overhead cleave designed to split a granite boulder clean in two.
THWAP!
The heavy steel blade slammed squarely into the crown of the blue sphere.
Instead of slicing through soft jelly, the steel blade sank barely two inches into the azure surface before grinding to a dead, shuddering halt. Lin Xiao’s dynamic non-Newtonian fluid stonework reacted in a heartbeat to the violent moving impact. At the exact split second of contact. His jelly-like molecules were locked together under sideways tearing force, transitioning from zero-drag fluid into an iron-hard, diamond-hard barrier.
The bone-shaking shock of hitting an unmoving surface traveled straight back up the broadsword. The lieutenant’s wrists buckled. The iron rivets on his bronze bracers snapped. The bones of his forearms groaned under the painful recoil.
“Now, that’s just terribly rude,” Lin Xiao’s cheerful, relaxed mental deep echoed directly in the lieutenant’s skull. “A proper gentleman introduces himself before swinging heavy tools around. You didn’t even say excuse me.”
Lin Xiao gave a small, rhythmic shudder.
TWANG!
An explosive elastic rebound rippled through his fluid water’s skin. The stored striking force snapped back up the steel blade with terrifying high-pressure speed. The serrated broadsword shattered into a shower of harmless metal filings. Meanwhile, the bone-shaking blast wave slapped the two-hundred-pound lieutenant backward through the air like a rag doll. The man tumbled twenty feet across the road, landing headfirst in a dry blackberry thicket with a pathetic, wheezing yelp.
The bandit chieftain’s good eye bulged in superstitious terror. “Archers!” he shrieked, scrambling behind an iron-rimmed wagon wheel. “SHOOT IT! PIN THE DAMN BLUE DEMON TO THE ROCKS! USE THE BLACK SCORPION ARROWS!”
Thirty bandit bowmen dropped to one knee along the limestone ridges. He drew their heavy composite horn bows to the ear. From the scrub brush on the opposite flank, thirty foot-bandits unslung barbed iron javelins.
“FIRE!”
An ear-splitting twang of thirty bowstrings rang out all at once. Two hundred and forty barbed iron arrows and heavy javelins tore through the midday air, their steel tips glistening with greasy black scorpion venom. The lethal projectiles came together upon the two-foot blue sphere in a choking cloud of whistling death that darkened the sky above the gully.
“Look out!” Captain Zhao screamed, struggling to push himself up on his good leg to throw his bronze shield over the strange blue creature. “Get behind the wagon!”
Lin Xiao didn’t retreat behind the wagon. He swelled.
In the span of a single heartbeat, his elastic mass ballooned outward like a blue storm cloud. Swelling from a two-foot sphere into a towering, twelve-foot-wide semi-clear azure dome, Lin Xiao formed a seamless protective barrier spanning the entire width of the sunken road!
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
The lethal volley struck the blue dome with rapid, muffled thuds.
Every single one of the two hundred and forty barbed arrows and iron javelins sank into Lin Xiao’s thick, jelly-like outer mass. The poisonous tips, designed to punch through boiled bull hide and bronze plate armor, pierced four inches into his semi-clear surface and stopped dead. The huge striking force of the barrage was absorbed cleanly by his non-Newtonian buffer. Meanwhile, the black scorpion poison was instantly stripped down to inert minerals by the Primordial Chaos essence lining his outer wall.
Within seconds, Lin Xiao looked remarkably like a huge, wiggling blue hedgehog, bristling with black feathers and barbed wooden shafts.
The bandit archers lowered their bows, their mouths hanging wide open in stunned silence. Lu Feng let out a strangled gasp. He grabbed his chest in horror, convinced the noble water spirit had sacrificed its life to shield his wagons.
“Oh, look at that,” Lin Xiao’s voice bubbled cheerfully, fully unfazed by the two hundred and forty projectiles lodged in his body. “It feels just like being a giant pin-cushion. You know, back when I worked the freight docks in my last life, we used to stick toothpicks into oranges at office holiday parties to make little fruit centerpieces. This brings back remarkably fond memories.”
Within his mind, the Dao Spirit calculated the return trajectories with cold, cold and exact speed:
“Trajectories calculated, Host,” the Dao Spirit said smoothly. “Non-lethal return angles mapped to clothing fabric, leather belts, and timber backstops. Care margin: zero point a tiny fraction of an inch. Recoil air-powered pressure primed.”
“Time to return the lost property to their owners,” Lin Xiao chuckled. “Air-powered reverse launch, engage!”
Lin Xiao tightened his internal void pressure. He drew his outer surface inward by six inches, then released the stored elastic tension with an explosive POOOOOOP!
FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
All two hundred and forty arrows and javelins shot backward at the same time!
They didn’t fly wildly like scattered buckshot. Guided by the Primordial Chaos Dao and the Dao Spirit’s tiny flight path matrix, the projectiles whistled across the clearing with faster-than-sound speed, weaving between wagon frames and horses with clean, steady care.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
Sixty bandits shrieked in terror as the arrows struck them with terrifying care.
Not a single arrow pierced flesh. Instead, four arrows struck each bandit at the same time. One through their left sleeve, one through their right sleeve, one through their left trouser cuff, and one through their right trouser cuff!
The barbed iron shafts drove deep into the yellow pine trunks, limestone boulders, and wooden fences behind them, pinning all sixty outlaws securely to the scenery like dried butterflies pinned to a collector’s corkboard!
The bandit chieftain found himself pinned six feet above the ground against a massive yellow pine trunk, his heavy leather coat skewered by eight heavy iron javelins. He kicked his legs wildly in mid-air, but the shafts held his clothes with iron-hard grip. That left him dangling like a tattered scarecrow.
“What kind of sorcery is this?!” the chieftain wailed in total hysteria, his face pale as paper. “He spat them back! He caught two hundred arrows with his belly and spat them back! Merciful heavens, it’s a living siege catapult!”
Down in the ditch, the three rogue demonic fighters realized the situation was hopelessly lost. Cursing wildly, they drew blackened bone sickles and ignited blood-mist magic charms, preparing to sprint into the dense brush.
“Flee! It’s an Ancient Fiendgod—”
Before the lead fighter could finish his sentence, the sunlight in the clearing vanished.
The shadows beneath the yellow pines detached from the limestone floor, surging upward like living curtains of ink. From the pitch-black mist, seven massive shapes materialized without making a sound.
Xiao Hei stepped into the clearing, flanked by six imposing Shadow Gale Wolves. His twelve-foot frame radiated the bone-chilling cold of an eclipse, his ruby eyes fixing upon the three fleeing cultists with hungry disdain.
With a single, easy swipe of his shadow-cloaked paw, Xiao Hei struck the lead fighter’s bone sickle. The cursed weapon shattered into powdered bone ash. The bone-shaking blast wave slapped the fighter onto his stomach, pinning him flat against the dirt beneath a heavy, coal-black paw.
The other six wolves moved with timed together perfection, disarming the leftover two cultists in three heartbeats, stripping their poison bags, and stacking them neatly in the dust like cordwood.
“Sovereign,” Xiao Hei rumbled, bowing his head respectfully toward the blue dome. “outer edge secured. The demonic vermin are stopped.”
Lin Xiao collapsed his twelve-foot dome back into his comfortable two-foot sphere, landing in the dirt with a soft, rubbery bounce. He shook his surface, ensuring not a speck of yellow pine dust remained on his semi-clear sapphire skin.
“Excellent work, Xiao Hei,” Lin Xiao praised him warmly. “Very clean, very skilled. No blood on the road, and the oxen are calming down.”
Lin Xiao bounced over to where Captain Zhao lay slumped against a wagon wheel, his calf swollen and purple from the black scorpion venom. The veteran guard tried to raise his sword, but Lin Xiao gently extended a small azure slime arm. He tapped the wound.
A gentle pulse of Primordial Chaos essence flowed into the puncture, neutralizing the rotting scorpion venom in less than two breaths. The swelling vanished, the blackened skin cleared to healthy bronze. Captain Zhao’s labored breathing right away smoothed into easy calm.
The veteran guard stared down at his healed leg, touching the flawless skin in total, shocked disbelief. “My leg... The scorpion poison is gone? In three breaths?”
Across the road, Patriarch Lu Feng slowly lowered his trembling hands from his face.
The sixty ferocious Red-Scar Bandits who had terrorized the southern borders for a decade were pinned helplessly to trees and boulders, crying for mercy. The three terrifying demonic fighters were stacked like logs beneath the paws of a huge shadow wolf king that could have swallowed a carriage whole.
And resting in the middle of it all was a round, squishy blue ball of jelly, humming a cheerful tune that sounded suspiciously like a street vendor’s song.
Lu Feng’s counting frame slipped from his numbed fingers, clattering onto the dirt road.
“Great... Great Immortals...” Lu Feng stammered, his merchant brain struggling to process the impossible tableau before him. “Who... What heavenly palace have we stumbled into?”