Elder Cultivator

A convenient island like the Paradise of Thirteen Hills was something they wanted to return to, given the chance. They ended up staying only three weeks instead of the intended month, due to the ease of finding the needed supplies to repair their vessels. The reason it took more than just a single day or two was that proper seasoning was required so that the pieces didn’t warp later. That took constant work from some of the cultivators to dry it out without damaging it, but they were able to devote themselves to that task without worry. Everything was cut to the right proportions and finalized without much trouble.

Sails had also been damaged during the fight with the kraken, as well as some smaller battles. Those were harder to replace since they required more complex materials, but spares had been brought along for just that purpose. Even great rips could be quickly sewn together by the work of deft hands.

Though people were eagerly gathering supplies, Anton and others made sure they weren’t taking too much. It was quite a large island, so it wouldn’t have been possible to cause serious damage to the local ecology just by taking supplies, but the materials for a mast for one of the flagships took an extraordinary tree. Nothing could guarantee another of the same size would grow, but Anton made sure to provide a little help to some of the trees that had potential, donating some of his energy and making sure their soil was good. A little work over a couple weeks probably wouldn’t matter, but it was best to start thinking about such things now.

As they got ready to leave, Anton continued to think about how it was strange. The whole island, of course. He could see how such a place might have abundant spiritual energy, but it seemed abnormally high even for that. The shape made it seem artificial, but beyond the symmetrical layout of hills nothing even indicated the presence of cultivators. While the plants were healthy and strong, the trees large and durable, they hardly seemed like something cultivators would plant. The fruit was tasty and nutritious, but it didn’t carry huge stores of natural energy to absorb. The animals were mostly small creatures that lived in harmony, nothing large and tough that could be turned into weapons or armor. It was just an island, happily sustaining its little ecosystem.

But eventually they set off, after taking careful notes so they could be as likely as possible to find it again. There were no other nearby islands known to compare in location, but they did their best.

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There were many things that could be fought, but one thing that people might say was undefeatable was nature itself, and more specifically the weather. Anton would have agreed with that assessment at some point, but he had grown to believe quite differently. A determined enough group of powerful cultivators could do anything.

That included fighting a storm. Sure, sailors might talk about fighting a storm, but they really meant sailing through one- or weathering it, really, since they wouldn’t have sails unfurled in such a case.

Their fleet followed all of the normal protocols for a storm, except for what might have normally been the most important. Spreading out a fleet during a storm was simply logical- the ships were the only thing that could be slammed into by the force of a storm, and if that was avoided there was one less danger to deal with. But instead of that, they pulled into a tight formation, the center boats pulling out to the sides so they were more of a diamond shape instead of a line, but the front and rear flagships collapsed the formation to a smaller area, with only a handful of meters between them and the pair of ships in the middle.

Some people were on duty at the oars, keeping the ships in the same relative positions. Their efforts were assisted by members of the Wandering Bush Sect, who created a sort of thorny barrier attached to all of the ships, holding them in the same position relative to each other with some leeway. After all, a fully rigid barrier would just be asking to be torn apart.

Others were on duty shoring up the defenses of the ships, combining their natural energy to create a large barrier. It wasn’t as good as a proper formation set up by a formation master, but unlike any other enemy the storm wasn’t looking for weak points to break through, or even cognizant of their existence. It simply threw wind and water as it pleased, raising waves that would overtop even the flagships.

The barriers were to prevent that, and others worked with them to counterattack, slashing apart the waves, which lessened how much of the impact hit at the same time. Waves crashed against the ships but due to the tight formation danger could only come from a limited angle, instead of every side of every ship.

Anton was on lightning duty. His job was to shoot arrows into the sky wherever lightning was building up, or at least anywhere that might threaten the ship. Provoking smaller bolts before they became too powerful was good, but what was even better was finding a way to redirect the strike elsewhere. Lightning was eager to seek out a target, and if he made an easy path for it to travel it would gladly strike the sea. That was an area his training with Vandale came in extremely helpful, as he had a large domain around him that he could control the flow of energy. He didn’t even need much power, just briefly forming a smooth path. The lightning would inevitably blast apart his control, but the power only came after it had chosen its path and was safe.

It was still disconcerting to see lightning bolts strike immediately next to the ship, but once it touched the water the lighting dispersed in all directions, diluting its power. Even bolts that were one, two meters wide and sufficient to vaporize Spirit Building cultivators were not a problem. The stronger bolts, those that could cause serious damage to Essence Collection cultivators or more, cause great gouts of steam as they struck the surface of the ocean, rocking the ships and deafening the people fighting against the storm- those without sufficient defenses, anyway.

The formations of the ships strained at those moments, as even a small portion of such a bolt had the potential to cause damage, but the various cultivators held, and Anton and others assigned to such duties continued to strive to push the strikes further from their vessels, which were otherwise the most tempting targets on the sea.

The methods of the Iron Fist Sect were a bit unorthodox in that area, as they worked either alone or in groups to strike directly back against the lightning. It seemed highly inefficient, as Anton could see Elder Magro leap into the air and punch a bolt of lightning, negating it instead of letting it pass through or around him. But at least such efforts prevented collateral damage. Anton only hoped they had properly paced themselves to outlast the storm, which had been going on for some hours already, and showed no signs of stopping soon.

An arrow flew past him, striking the water beneath the fleet. It wasn’t a missed shot, but instead the work of Grand Elder Kseniya, who was on monster duty. Because for some reason a number of the sea beasts thought the middle of a storm was a good time to go to the surface to try to find food. Or something like that, because Anton could hardly imagine that there was ever food on the surface, but something about the storm drew some of the beasts upwards.

Some of them were interested in the lightning itself, which the cultivators were quite happy to let them have. As long as they stayed away from the ships. That included some of the longnosed shipwreckers, though Anton thought they might have been a slightly different type. Their noses were slightly more rounded instead of spearlike, though certainly still quite capable of bashing through a hull or another beast’s side. At the moment, however, they were sticking their tips out of the water to be struck by lightning, which seemed to empower some of them. Anton kept his eye on them, though Kseniya would be first to react if they actually did anything threatening.

A gust of wind was deflected by the combined efforts of several warriors, keeping the wind from blowing away the weaker members. Freezing water splashed over everyone. But the cultivators held.

Another hour passed. A strange swelling of the waters caused one of the ships in the middle to capsize. Normally overturning would be the end of a sailing vessel, but its crew and passengers were made up of determined cultivators. Instead of immediately swimming for shelter on one of the other ships, they banded together in the water to try to right the ship. They began to join together much like those providing the outer barriers, a wide gathering of energy providing some leverage to press against their ship, flopping it back upright.

It was heavy in the water, practically sinking, but it began to be bailed out with buckets made of energy and of actual physical wood, with some cultivators skilled in manipulating water being the most effective. No doubt their supplies would be soaked and rather unappetizing, but the vessel would not be lost.

Kseniya and other defenders kept them safe from beasts who thought their legs looked somewhat appetizing, arrows of pure energy along with gouts of fire, ice, and thorny protrusions of plantlike energy.

Just above the fleet a large gathering of lightning began to build up. If Anton didn’t know better, he would have actually thought it was targeting them. But that should not be the case… unless they had stumbled into some sort of defensive formation of an isolationist sect. The flow of energy seemed to be entirely natural, though.

If he let the bolt of lightning strike straight down, or really anywhere below it at most angles, it would be devastating for the fleet. Even indirect impact might break through the defensive barriers of the larger ships, and the smaller ones would be annihilated. He absolutely wasn’t going to let the lives and the effort of the soaked sailors go to waste.

A dozen arrows made of energy, impractically oversized for most purposes, were nocked on a number of different bows formed of the same energy. The lightning above continued to build, but it wasn’t quite ready to release. Timing would be more important than speed, though he wanted both. His arrows shot out all around the cloud in different directions. Others picked up on what he was doing and added their own efforts, forming a web of energy spreading outward from the center. Anton did the same, with as many different arrows as he could maintain at once, before finally shooting an arrow almost horizontally, letting it curve around through the clouds towards the center. He wasn’t sure if he was the one to trigger it, if it finished building to its peak, or something else had… but everything went white.

He couldn’t see or hear, but he knew one thing. It had worked… well enough. At the very least, the great mass of energy hadn’t come down in the center of the fleet. Instead, it had spider down around it, creating many separate bolts on all sides. He felt the strain on the formations of the ships and those providing the barriers, but it had gotten far enough away, and distributed enough, that they managed to hold on.

Hopefully, there weren’t more like that. If there were…

Anton shook his head. Nothing lasted forever, not even this storm. In fact, as the lightning had snaked through the clouds above, a brief opening was formed. It wouldn’t suddenly bring an end to the rest of the storm, but it would give them a moment of respite to catch their breath.

As he saw the stars beyond, Anton wondered what level of power one would have to reach to disperse such a storm with individual effort. They didn’t have any peak Life Transformation cultivators among them, with most being in early Life Transformation. Even Grand Elder Kseniya herself was technically part of that group, though close to the next threshold.

Vandale could have probably done it. If not when Anton knew him, then when he was somewhat younger- he’d been at the peak of Life Transformation for some time. But without someone like that, they simply had to make do with working together. Anton wasn’t opposed to that at all, but it wasn’t always possible to guarantee such an excellent group of allies would be available.