Molting the Mortal Coil

The snowy sky darkened, and a golden flash shot through the clouds. The piercing cry of an eagle echoed through the air. The black clouds were suddenly disturbed and the gentle snowfall turned into winter lightning. A golden feathered eagle covered with arcs of golden electricity swooped through the sky, much higher than the Dragoon formation in the air. The Million Scale Shell was suddenly dispelled and the Dragoons shot in every direction, pouring into the dark smoke that hid the Fu Clan, following in the footsteps of the insect hordes. With the path to the sky clear, a huge golden lightning bolt fell from the sky, landing upon the serious woman. Lightning versus sound. The woman’s Qi channels hummed like a tuning fork, the energy she summoned forth in resistance spilled into the world and gave them all a glimpse at her powers.

The lightning bolt was knocked aside by her, but she found herself suddenly surrounded. In front of her was the Copper Skinned Jacanas, Baozhai. She was from a seemingly harmless looking species, with the exception of her absurdly long and copper skinned legs. Her body was only about three feet tall, about the size of a tall person’s upper body, yet her legs were freakishly long, each of them ten feet tall with each of her clawed toes being about almost a yard long on their own. Her swinging legs were like huge bronze clubs, and her use of the Eight-Jointed Leg technique made them seem like they had many more joints than normal. The combination with her metallic scales made her kicks become more like a whip or flail, curving around the woman’s defensive maneuvers and striking her from the back or sides.

In addition to the long legs striking from a dozen feet away, the Violent Shadow Grouse body of Songji appeared behind the woman and struck with her large clawed legs. She was also another unimpressive looking species, having a body with a very chicken-like shape, yet with huge fluffy black feathers. Even so, the species was not named ‘Violent’ for no reason and her legs and beak struck rapidly, aiming at the woman’s weak points with every strike. Whenever the Yincha Nascent Soul turned to strike back, Songji jumped into a shadow like it was a pool of water, leaving a puff of feathers behind in her wake.

Of course, even with three others helping her, Ruanfu was still the only one to cause any real damage to the Yincha woman. The others were mainly acting as distractions to make it harder for her to avoid Ruanfu’s attacks. Her spear-like feathers flew past and drew blood from the woman, but each time she used Wave Combustion, the woman met her head on. Their laws clashed and the woman held her own.

A few of Whitestaff’s disciples rushed to join the battle, reinforcing the group of swordsmen. Things were not going in their favor, and the longer this dragged on, the worse it would get. Even now, the enemy was getting more and more powerful by the moment, the half dozen drummers had picked up their pace, the sound of their playing felt like it shook the heart. The enemy momentum only grew while his own forces weakened. Sage regretted the loss of so many Dragoons, but they were necessary to clear the way for them. From their harassing actions he ordered them into full attack and he called back the Tiankong Siblings.

They were already covered in blood and had more than a few broken bones already, so it was time to go. Unfortunately, the enemy Nascent Souls were still quite powerful. While they’d been wounded and weakened, they were far from being out of the fight. It really is far too difficult to beat people ten levels higher.

Baozhai wanted to stay and help him fight, but Sage would have none of it.

“If you don’t come with me now and go into the Inner World, I will leave you behind and you will die here without a doubt.”

The ultimatum was sent with the Messaging Jade and they all gave in, rushing towards him and disappearing into the Inner World. He didn’t care if they knew he had a storage treasure that was a living space, these enemies of his were already out to kill him so it didn’t matter if they knew more about how rich he was. Surrounded as he was, Sage brought out his Formation Machine. It was still heavily damaged, but it was still functional and he chose to sacrifice it to buy his escape. He’d loaded the thing with a couple hiding formations, but the rest of it was filled with defensive Formation Plates. It was set to detect the incoming attacks and switch to a matching shield. The defensive formations weren’t set up to defend a huge area, and instead set up like a point defense, attempting to block each attack with a five foot diameter disc.

The problem of course being that each formation could only guard against one attack at once, and their coverage area was limited. Even with a few dozen shields appearing, the enemy merely had to focus all their attacks on one area, and then have someone else with a similar technique attack from the opposite angle. It was far from foolproof, but Sage only needed it to buy him a few moments of time.

Ruanfu was the most resistant to being sent away, but she would only slow down his escape so he threw her into the Inner World forcibly along with the Blacksilver Pawns and the Shard Rifles that the Soul Clone sent over. She didn’t really resist him, and with the ten foot wide metal disc to hide him, Sage dove into a hole on the ground. The hole had been dug during the battle and he used the Formation Machine as a lid to cover the hole. His giant cobra body slid down the tunnel, all of the chaos caused among the Fu Clan was merely a distraction to allow him to take this escape path.

The Warp Worms had the last few years to dig him a network of escape tunnels underneath Lionheart Town. All he had to do was have a Warp Worm dig an entrance to the tunnel system while the battle was going on. As soon as he saw that things were going sideways, he ordered Wan Ling to hide herself and planned for his escape. Fleeing from Lionheart Town for the third time already. This place really doesn’t like me.

In the tunnel, he traveled quickly, his mouth partially open and releasing a thick mist as he moved. On the surface it only took them a few minutes to realize he was gone and overcome the Formation Machine. They broke past the many layers of defenses and then shattered the huge metal disc into pieces. Most of the Formation Plates were already melted and broken by that time, but the whole device was finally destroyed after having served Sage for so long. The materials were expensive, but he did not hesitate to sacrifice them to buy himself time. Four Nascent Souls were on his tail, the most powerful force he’d ever gone up against.

He heard enemies entering the tunnels behind him, but the thick mist was his Paradise Nightmare poison. As confined as the tunnel was, the poison was extremely concentrated and the enemies following him started sweating profusely in just a few seconds. The Yincha woman leapt into the hole and chased after him, using the power of her law to force the air away. The whole tunnel was reverberating from the booming bass echo of her power. She kept a small area around herself completely clear of poison with her rippling sound energy. Sage still had a big lead on her, so he couldn’t use his own Law to fight back. She progressed steadily, the rumbling ground giving those on the surface an easy to follow trail.

Whitestaff and her disciples didn’t bother following the sound. They sat down and placed their staves across their laps, closing their eyes as if to meditate. A few minutes later they stood and held their staves out. The tips of their weapons waved back and forth and they followed after it.