Molting the Mortal Coil

Slowed down as he was, he could barely keep his distance from the giant monster. The fiery wasteland created in their wake made for an easy to follow trail, and despite how fast Ruanfu had been flying, he knew it was only a matter of time until his enemies caught up with him.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The giant tortoise stayed on his tail, and despite not knowing why it was so fixated on him, he might still use this to his advantage. The large scale destruction that this monster caused was terrifying. For a moment he thought about turning it against the cities of his enemies, but immediately decided against it. Too many innocents would be involved. Even if he wasn’t heartless, there was a rule from the higher power to prevent the slaughter of mortals. Now, Sage knew that to be the Kingdom and Empire level, and while they wouldn’t bat an eye if mortals were killed, that was only up to a point. If thousands of mortals died, there would be an effect on the economies of the human cities. If that happened, the perpetrator would have to make up for the loss or they would face punishment. When the numbers got larger, so would the required punishment and reparations. If the higher ups didn’t get their tributes, they would be angry.

Even so, there was still a use for this big beast following him. Sage slowly circled the area, increasing the swathe of devastation that the monster left in its wake. He didn’t want to destroy a larger area like that, but he was steering the tortoise back towards the way he’d come from and he couldn’t just go between its legs. While the tortoise moved slowly, there was no telling what tricks it might have if he were to get too close. The only reason he’d been somewhat safe so far was because of the long range.

The wide turn he took wrecked thousands of acres of forest, with many Spirit Animals and Demonic Beasts spooked out of their dens and sent running. Sage saw more than a few of them that in other circumstances he would have liked to catch and take home, but he didn’t have time for that kind of concern at this moment, putting all his attention upon fleeing from the moving volcano behind him. Without his healing factor and his Heavenly Materials to support him, he would have been taken down by his injuries. Instead he fought on. When the flames were too intense he smothered them with his Samsara Flame. When a molten boulder landed too close to him, he used the Blue Icesilver armor to weather the fragments from the piece exploding apart. When the smoke grew too thick, he released a burst from Stormbreath to clear the way. The Green Lifewater helped him convert Qi into strength for his physical body, keeping him going day and night. There were even a few times when the giant tortoise tried to corner him, blasting nearby mountains and cliffs to form an encirclement.

At those times he had to use the Sovereign Stone to force his way through. While it was able to control earth and stone, it was a more subtle influence. Using it to directly manipulate the ground was a slow process. A king didn’t micro-manage his troops, he gave orders and those orders were given to generals. Those generals gave orders to their captains, and so on. Unfortunately, Sage didn’t have many generals, only the Black Enhydros. Each time that tortoise trapped him he took quite a few hits before he managed to squeak his way through. He was already missing many scales with blackened and burnt parts of his flesh showing through underneath. He focused the Blue Icesilver armor on these injured places, his fast healing unable to keep up with the sheer number of burns he was receiving.

Yet, despite these problems, he maintained his pace. He could not get caught by this monster and if it was intent on chasing him, he would use its power to his benefit. They’d run away from Lionheart Town for nearly a whole night, and now he spent a full day rushing back. His speed on the ground was far slower than Ruanfu’s in the air, so even though the enemy were moving to meet him, it still took him quite some time to intercept them in their pursuit.

Sage wasn’t sure when he’d run into them, but when the sun started to fall he got a bad feeling and rolled to the side. Dozens of spikes smashed against the ground where he’d been. They sunk deep into the ground, and only after recovering did Sage notice the spikes had thin wires attaching pairs of them together. They’d been attempting to tie him down with that ambush and he’d only narrowly avoided it. One of the spikes had stabbed into him, but because of the wire attached to it, he pulled it out with a flick of his tail. The shadows around him increased and he opened his mouth to release a blast wave of air to clear his path. He formed a path through the smokes that the Fu Clan liked to use and then countered with one of his own. Thick white mist rolling out in counter to the black smoke.

He slithered quickly away and chuckled inwardly as it seemed the Fu Clan didn’t seem to realize what was on his tail. The ground was gently rumbling and a fire burned in the forest, but the smoke from the fires along with their own black smoke was probably making it hard for them to see what was going on. It was also something that Sage had been hoping to make happen, he’d been constantly slithering into low valleys and riverbed areas. While it increased the number of times he got trapped by the falling boulders, he also hoped the high ground around him could hide the tortoise in the distance. The moving volcano probably thought he was trying to hide from it, but that monster had somehow stayed right on his tail the whole time.

Once he avoided the first ambush from the Fu Clan, a half dozen others were sprung. He avoided explosive talismans, slaughtering formations composed of hundreds of energy blades, flurries of thousands of hidden weapons bearing poison, and finally, actual Fu Clansmen jumping out with weapons drawn and aiming for his weak points. Even as injured as he was, his Demonic Beast body was like a snake-shaped tank. He constantly healed his injuries and pushed his Qi production to the limit while bringing out the Blacksilver Pawns. They leapt onto his body and combined together.

Blacksilver King. The third form they could take, the dozen Soul Fragments working together with the Sovereign Stone to guide and control the Black Enhydros to form a thick layer around his body and scales. The added mass made him stronger and the thick layer protected him from impacts. Then thousands of sword sized spikes shot out from the oil black layer. The Blue Icesilver created a hedgehog-like offensive and defensive covering for his body, held together by the Black Enhydros. The blades were angled backwards, allowing them to slide along with his direction of motion and to even improve his traction on the ground. It also stopped him from slithering backwards, but he embraced this freight train like motion and continued to rumble away from the tortoise behind him and the Fu Clansmen that were coming towards him from all sides.

As usual, they liked to build a perimeter and slowly close the net, always the hunters trying to keep their prey from escaping. It was just too bad for them that they didn’t realize Sage wasn’t the prey, he was bait.