Molting the Mortal Coil

The four cultivators outside the Fortress fled rapidly, retreating to the gates where the voice had come from. The Blacksilver Pawns did not pursue them, as this was exactly what Sage was aiming for. Drawing out all of Zhang Tu’s reserves. He waited to see who or what else would come out of the Fortress, but he was disappointed. The four who had been fighting ran back into the Fortress and sealed the gates.

That was unexpected.

Sage used Divine Breath once more and used a booming voice to make another taunt, “Do you think my soldiers have a time or range limit? Are you so cowardly that you’d rather let your people die just to buy time?”

As he spoke, the twelve Blacksilver Pawns had mostly returned to their perfect forms. As a demonstration of his intent, one of them smashed its fist against a large boulder. The eight foot tall rock was shattered clean in half. That rock was nothing in comparison to the eighty foot tall and forty foot thick wall of the Fortress, but it was an indicator of how quickly they would demolish it. The twelve spread out and dashed toward either side of the gate, smashing their fists against the walls. They could also climb their way up, but it wasn’t everyday you got to siege a castle. It was far more impressive to those inside to feel the huge earthen wall shake from a dozen coordinated impacts. The strike sent a low booming sound through the Fortress and rattled dust from the rafters.

The people in half black and half white on the walls started to attack. Their own abilities similar to those who had been fighting earlier, but quite a bit weaker. The light ray that came from a finger was only the thickness of a pencil and it slowly melted the black tar off a Blacksilver Pawn. It was more of a heat ray than a laser, slowly melting them down. Others used solid darkness, but they could only form thorn-like arrows or spears, throwing or shooting them from a bow down at the Blacksilver Pawns who were smashing against the walls. The few hundred of them attacked fiercely, but the Blacksilver Pawns didn’t seem to care. They took damage, but their speed of regeneration nearly kept up with the punishment they were suffering.

“Archers!”

Sage pointed to the air and then down at the wall, giving a quick command to the squads he’d armed with Stumblebows. They had already confiscated weapons from quite a number of the Jade Horde. They were far from outfitting all the Dragoons, but they still had hundreds of Stumblebows. More than enough to give the defenders on the wall quite a problem. The Dragoons brought out the large crossbows and fired bolts down from above. After each shot, the Dragoon would dip down a dozen feet through the sky when the Stumblebow suddenly increased in weight to load itself. Then the Dragoon would stabilize and fly upwards again while it took aim. In the air, the winged soldiers were constantly bobbing slowly up and down making a somewhat mesmerizing sight as they rained bolts down on the defenders.

On the wall, the first volley of bolts did quite a bit of damage, but then the darkness manipulators immediately stopped throwing thorns and instead built canopies made of darkness. They each took a small section of the wall and built a little roof over their heads, creating protection for themselves and the light cultivators at their sides. Most of the light cultivators also changed their tactics and aimed towards the sky, firing off their small heat rays at the flying Dragoons. While their altitude put them out of archery range, the light beams had a very impressive range. They were weakened by distance, but if four or five of them focused fire they quickly learned how to burn the wings off a Dragoon.

With the Dragoons starting to fall from the sky, it almost seemed like things had turned to favor the defenders, but with all that manpower devoted to the Dragoons, the Blacksilver Pawns were quickly returning to their full strength and speeding up their destruction of the walls. With the counter-attack in progress, Sage ordered other Dragoons without Stumblebows to catch their fallen brethren and pass off the crossbows to others. The Dragoons with damaged wings were formed up into infantry units and marched up towards the Fortress. Their disc shaped shields were not as large as the Jade Horde’s Arrow Guard, but they were still three feet tall, more than enough to form a shield wall.

As more and more of the troops on the walls were injured and killed, the battle continued to intensify. When the casualties had risen to more than one in ten, that voice finally erupted from the Fortress again.

“Enough!”

Sage felt an immense pressure suddenly emit from inside the Fortress and his eyes widened. Nascent Soul! He knew that level of power well. A higher rank cultivator could hide their strength from those weaker than them, and only now that the enemy had chosen to reveal themselves could Sage sense them. That’s right. Them. Two powerful auras rolled out from the Fortress and this time the gates did not open.

“Reform!”

Sage quickly ordered the Dragoons back into their strongest formation. Many of them had left the Million Scale Shell to fire their crossbows and form into a ground assault, but they quickly buzzed back towards the safety of the formation. Unfortunately for them, the enemy was annoyed at the loss of so many of their own. There was a bright flash of light and dozens of golden light beams lit up the sky like a laser light show. In broad daylight. Hundreds of Dragoons fell lifeless from the sky, sliced clean in half by the sweeping rays of light.

Then there was a flash and a large, muscular man wearing white robes was now standing in the center of the grass field in front of the Fortress. He was standing directly between Sage and the Fortress. Then a dark streak flew up into the air from the center of the Fortress, shooting directly upwards and then swooping down towards the man. As it slowed down, Sage took a good look at it. Her. There was a delicately built woman in black with a cold expression on her face. On her back was a pair of huge feathered wings formed entirely out of wispy darkness. It was like a cloud of water vapor, absent of all color and somehow maintaining a single form and acting like a physical object.

Sage didn’t seem deterred by the appearance of two cultivators in the sixth rank. Instead, he smiled and cupped his fist. Giving them a bow in greetings, his voice still loud but not booming like before.

“So you must be the Masters that Zhang Tu hired. He can’t have offered you that much. How much will it cost to cancel your contract with him?”

They didn’t seem impressed, the cold woman wearing black stayed silent, while the large man in white gave him an intense look, “You’ve killed our Disciples and forced us out. Now you think you can pay us off? Who do you think you’re dealing with! Foolish ant. Idiot. At least you can die knowing that you’ll be famous in the future for being killed by the Yin Yang Twins.”

Oh, right! The Black White Army is the mercenary group formed by the Yin Yang Twins and their Disciples.

“You should at least state a price before you try such hard methods to negotiate it up higher.”

While they spoke, the Blacksilver Pawns had abandoned their attack. They leapt and ran back towards Sage, forming a rough circle around him a dozen yards away. He could tell that these two he was facing had no fear of him at all, and almost seemed amused by his ‘futile’ actions. They’d just been letting their Disciples get some practice in, but too many of the lower ranking ones had died so they chose to step in.