“That… seems like the beast’s lair. We’re almost upon it. Be ready,” Kong Xi said, having examined the soil for what felt like the thousandth time that day.

It was their fourth day of exploration, as they needed to travel slowly and carefully while also hunting for more food and sustenance to keep themselves strong and ready for battle. Although every realm of planar cultivation permitted the replacing of some nutritional needs with planar energy, it wasn’t until the higher realms that one could go by without any food at all.

Kong Xi and Song Ming were both in the second realm, Planar Pool, so they needed plenty of food to keep them going. Planar beasts provided small quantities of planar energy along with plenty of nutrients, so they sought them out and, with Kong Xi’s insights, easily hunted several first realm planar beasts every day. In fact, they ended up eating better than when they stayed in the village, though Song Ming did miss Min Yu’s cooking and style of food. Although he was a good hunter, Kong Xi wasn’t the best cook.

Still, these things will come to an end soon, and they would be able to return to within a day or two, rushing right back and giving her the chance to see Bianca and protect her from the madness that seemed to be brewing around her.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t have suffered much, as she would hate to see the poor woman harmed without rhyme or reason.

“You’re thinking about her again.”

“What? I- um…”

“If you will be distracted in such a manner during battle, you will likely be slain. The beast ahead is some type of water or earth-type Treading Earth, a large creature that could be dozens of metres wide, with enough weight and force to crush you by accident,” he said, “If you will have wayward thoughts, direct them only to empowering yourself in battle, and go through the rest once the battle is finished without doubt.”

“Okay, I will… try. I’m worried about her.”

“If you trust her, then don’t be. She doesn’t seem like a fool that would get herself into trouble unnecessarily.”

“I don’t think she would, but… let’s hurry up and take the planar beast down.”

She tried to take his advice to heart, grasping the hilt of her sword and advancing by Kong Xi’s side, heading through a thick part of the forest towards the origin of the dryness of their crops and fields.

The trees around them were clearly dying, yellowing leaves falling from the branches and coating the ground. Each one crunched loudly beneath their feet, even with their collective attempts to remain quiet. If the beast they followed relied on sound – a thing not typical of Treading Earths, fortunately enough – or had a good sense of it – which was more common, according to Xi Wu Lin’s tomes – then it would be able to perceive their approach long before either of them could.

Song Ming and Kong Xi were both in the second realm, so their spiritual perception was utterly miniscule in comparison to even the weakest of their other senses. Even if they tried to perceive something with their sense of touch and nothing more, they would still be able to perceive things at a greater distance than with spiritual perception.

Even the air around them felt oddly dry, as if they stepped into the Barren Expanse at the Eastern Continent’s north, a land filled with sand and dry rock and dead foliage. It was an unpleasant sensation for the both of them.

Fortunately, it wasn’t so bad as to actively impair either of them, and it couldn’t compare in threat to the thing that caused the phenomena, a great beast that slowly entered their line of sight as they crossed the boundary between ownerless forest, and the planar beast’s lair. This line was drawn with the sudden cessation of tall trees and the appearance of numerous splintered stumps and broken oaks, coating the ground and all seeming to face the centre of the clearing, if one could even call it with such a simple term.

The planar beast looked to be made of earth and rock, as if it was a large hill held up by twelve legs that simply grew out from it. It was among the more peculiar of the planar beasts Song Ming knew of, but they did know for a fact that it was responsible for draining the soil of moisture, using it for cultivation or food, or perhaps both.

From afar, it was hard to tell whether it was in the second or third realm, but the aura it released was powerful, pressuring them from the edge of the dry expanse.

“Stand by the side, watch for openings. Stab with Eidolon Lunge when you see them. Back off as soon as you can, and don’t get crushed,” Kong Xi instructed her quietly, “I’ll force some openings out of it. Are you ready?”

Song Ming took a deep breath and began channelling her energy, “Let’s go.”

He nodded, and they both rushed out, jumping onto the torn-down logs and using them to progress. Although they were uneven and rough, making it difficult to get ideal footing on them, they were everywhere, covering nearly centimetre of terrain, so it was best to get used to it and employ the particularities of the terrain to their advantage.

Kong Xi hastened straight towards the Treading Earth, brandishing his spear and jumping across the various logs and stumps with clear proficiency. Song Ming headed to the side, travelling around the torn-down expanse to approach the planar beast from a different direction and hopefully gain an advantage in that manner. Neither of them had fought a beast such as this before, and planar beasts with less resemblance to regular animals tended to vary from one example to another quite a bit, so the theories and descriptions found in the village would only have so much helpful information.

It had been quiet at first, only the wind and their footsteps on creaking, cracking wood disturbing the scene, but then a horrific screech shattered the relative calm. No one description could sum it up in full: metal grinding against metal, the cry of a dying rabbit, the breaking of the earth itself, and more.

The noise was so awful that Song Ming nearly stopped sprinting while her feet were still in the air, so much attention drawn to it that she just had to bring her hands up and block her ears. She felt as if they would begin to bleed the next moment, as if her very mind was attacked by this terrible disturbance, as if her insides would turn to a crimson mist and-

‘No, I have to… I have to come back! I promised!’ a thought came to her mind, and suddenly that pain had grown so much less significant.

From a deadly threat, it turned to an annoyance, and she realised that the sound wasn’t quite as loud as it first seemed. If anything, the dryness of her skin was a bigger concern, as it seemed that the Treading Earth was actively draining her as well as the environment, at least while she had been in a state of confusion.

She looked to Kong Xi, and found him lunging at the beast already, stabbing at one of its legs.

It moved slowly, raising some of the other legs, but the instant the tip of the spear pierced the surface of its leg – whether that was stone, earth, skin or whatever else – the other legs sped up and crashed down, sending a pair of great waves of force towards him from both sides.

With one hand remaining on the spear, he brought up the other and quickly formed a particular Daoist seal with his hand, causing a powerful light to burst out from within.

In the moment that the impact hit him, a sigil resembling a bear, framed in fragmented circles, burst out behind him. It took on the strike, and the sigil cracked, numerous small flaws spreading across the sigil of light. After a moment, it faded, and a different glow lit up around Kong Xi’s body, a powerful aura reaching even Song Ming’s location.

He grabbed the spear with both hands and forced it deeper into the beast’s leg, then pulled it out and leapt back, easily clearing several metres with a single jump.

Another horrible screech sounded from the Treading Earth, and it quickly followed. Each step produced a flash of planar energy on the peak of its body, condensing into silvery spears that shot out in Kong Xi’s direction, missing by just a hair each time.

‘It doesn’t seem to have an anchor, at least, so it should only be in the second realm. That means that the both of us have a good chance of success,’ Song Ming couldn’t help but smile, ‘Shame I haven’t got a clue where to strike this thing… It should have some openings somewhere, especially when it encounters a threat, but…’

Perhaps she was just not familiar enough with her foe, but she could see no place in particular to attack, nor did Kong Xi’s earlier strike seem to actually injure the Treading Earth.

There was no blood, no peculiar bodily fluids, not even a faint mist of planar energy leaking from the stab wound. It was too far for her to even confirm the continued presence of the injury, so for all she knew, Kong Xi’s spear was not even capable of threatening the creature. Nevertheless, he kept trying.

Whenever he found a chance, he lunged in and unleashed the phantom of a beast, most commonly using a bull or a wolf phantom that burst out alongside each stab, striking the surface of the Treading Earth’s legs, and then he retreated, usually avoiding the attacks of the planar beast. In the few times he failed, he would manifest a beast sigil and take the blow, cracks forming on the edges of each sigil he chose to use.

‘I can’t see any weak point, so… I should attack anyway and try to help Kong XI out,’ Song Ming tightened her grasp on her sword and advanced, channelling energy into her legs and pushing her body to her limits.

As soon as she neared the beast, she leapt up and unleashed the planar construct of the Eidolon Lunge, letting it manifest around her blade before she attempted to pierce the beast’s flesh.

However, she was faced with a sudden manifestation of numerous silvery spears all around her, appearing far quicker than the others and flying at her before she could even react. She could feel her heart pause and her life flash before her eyes – though most of it seemed to be one particular day, when Bianca had kneeled before her let her feel something she’d never felt before – but her body moved faster than she could will it to.

Song Ming swung her blade around and used the planar construct on her blade to meet the silver spears, the construct breaking apart and changing into a circle of pure planar energy, briefly manifesting into a near-liquid state.

The spear constructs met with this circle and broke against it, shattering the circle in the process. Most were destroyed then and there, turning into a silvery mist that faded into the air, but one was just delayed enough to only be met with the barrier’s remains, passing it with ease and stabbing Song Ming’s arm.

Whatever sense of relief she might have had at her unexpected success was instantly destroyed. An overwhelming, awful pain shot through her entire body, though the sudden gash in her left arm, just above the elbow, was by far the most painful point.

“AH, F- Agh…” Song Ming cried out, desperately trying and failing to keep the wound from draining her of all her blood as she fell down to the torn-down logs below, crashing onto one.

She landed on her ass, and it hurt quite a bit, but nothing like the opening in her arm. It tore through flesh, muscle and even bone, a hole larger than her thumb that went all the way, in one end and out the other. It stole away some feeling from her left hand, and she couldn’t move it quite as she wished, but the overwhelming number of painful sensations made it impossible for her to properly concentrate on any of them.

The Treading Earth brought up a leg to crush her, but the phantom of a bull crashed into the side of the leg and knocked it away, just enough to prevent it from landing on her, limiting the damage to the powerful impact of the leg upon the dry wooden logs.

“Song Ming, catch!” the hunter exclaimed, throwing a small medicinal ball towards her.

Nobody in Xi Village knew how to produce proper pills, nor did they have the right equipment for it, but they did know of some herbs that were helpful to the body, accelerating recovery and bolstering its strength. When put together into a large ball that barely fit within the mouth, it could provide an effect that resembled a proper healing pill.

She caught it, albeit barely, and shoved it inside her mouth, chewing the dry herbs and feeling a rush of energy rush throughout her body, most of it concentrating around the hole in her arm and desperately trying to assist her body’s own healing ability in mending the wound.

More importantly, it ignited a faint flame within her, some kind of energy that let her overcome the pain and raise her blade once more, jumping towards the nearby Treading Earth leg and slashing it. Her blade was unchanged, and her strength was likely the same as well, but this time her attack brought out a different response from the beast. In place of hard earth and dirt, the creature suddenly opened up into writhing, vivid crimson flesh.

The leg’s surface broke apart and the overly crimson tendrils of flesh rushed out, being met with the edge of Song Ming’s sword. All of them were cut apart, forcing a retreat from these small limbs, but they instead went to pull the Treading Earth’s leg apart, trying to produce an opening within the central crimson bone, muscle or whatever it was.

‘If it’s trying to do something like that… attacking it might help it. I should retreat, and-’ she landed on the ground and quickly backed away, but a quick glance at the Treading Earth caused her eyes to widen.

This strange phenomenon of parting flesh and terrible tendrils wasn’t limited to the leg, and had in fact occurred across the entirety of the planar beast. Everything beneath the hill-like formation at the top broke apart and unveiled a colour too crimson to look… well, reasonable. It was as if the true Treading Earth was only a thin skeleton inside the earth, and now the various tendrils were trying to part even those, for a purpose only the heavens could know.

“K-Kong Xi, what do we do?” she asked, feeling the pain flash in her arm again.

“We… We must attack it regardless. It must have a weakness, even with this oddity,” he replied after only a brief pause, “Let’s target one of the legs, near where it connects to its centre.”

She managed to understand the reasoning behind his suggestion after another moment of intense pain from her open wound. If the creature hadn’t transformed into something outright incomprehensible, and it was still a Treading Earth at its core, then targeting the joint connecting the leg and the body could allow them to cut it off, and destabilise or outright topple the planar beast. Once grounded and immobilised, they could attack it however they wished, or even leave it if they could be sure that it wouldn’t recover or continue draining the moisture from the soil.

Song Ming took a deep breath and nodded, forcing her right arm to remain stable and raised in spite of her body losing more blood and energy as she went on. The medicinal ball was helping, but some unprocessed, dry planar herbs could only do so much in a short span of time.

The leg she’d attacked earlier stood out due to a number of fleshy tendrils bleeding all over the bark below, and it was the only bit of damage that they had been able to successfully inflict upon the planar beast, so they silently chose it as their first target. Once they readied their techniques, channelling some energy into the nascent forms of their planar constructs, they rushed forth once more.

Kong Xi manifested the phantom of a serpent, jaws rushing out to bite down on the thinnest part of the leg – if one could even call the thin, overly vivid red bone that – and Song Ming followed up with her only technique, the Eidolon Lunge, producing a similar planar construct of fierce jaws and teeth.

Their attacks landed moments from one another, but were met with no resistance from the beast. It seemed so occupied with the grasping and pulling at its own bones that it only reacted with a shriek after the second strike affected its balance, causing it to shudder on the spot and repeat the screech that had initially stunned Song Ming. This time, the combination of her fighting spirit and the growing pain in her left arm let her recover in moments, and the sight that followed dissipated any exhaustion in her body.

The tendrils pulling at the creature’s skeleton finally achieved something, as the bone within the leg they attacked parted ever so slightly and revealed a powerful silver light pouring out from within.

It was like nothing Song Ming had seen before, and yet she knew right away that it was an opening, a breach of some kind, leading to a place that should not be. She saw something attempting to pass through, countless fingers emerging and grasping the red bone, trying and, so far, failing to expand the opening any further.

Around the open slit in the crimson bone, there was also the aura of something overwhelming the natural energy of the world, replacing it with something else, imposing itself upon the land and shading it in the same silvery shade.

The Treading Earth produced another horrific screech as an anchor suddenly appeared above it, and all of its bones parted to reveal the same silvery breaches, the same fingers reaching through, the same strange aura, but with twelve legs and the central core that revealed a large number of strange tears, it mixed together to make this thing feel like an utterly undefeatable threat, a thing that could crush them without a second thought and return to whatever it had been doing.

She glanced to Kong Xi, and found that he was clearly afraid as well, his hand trembling as he tried to keep his spear raised.

And then, something far worse appeared behind them. Neither of them turned right away, nor could their spiritual perception reach far enough to perceive it, but they went pale as the sound of something opening appeared behind them – a deep, unnatural sound far surpassing the unpleasantness of the Treading Earth.

“So this is what I’ve been perceiving. Down, weakling. Bow before the Lord.”

A purple glow manifested beneath the Treading Earth and then pulsed out, growing rapidly with the same noise that heralded the voice behind them. Fingers pried at the edges of this rift – this breach – and pulled it open until it easily eclipsed the size of the Treading Earth, but all it did at first was glow with a violet light and obscure the dry logs beneath. Of course, when it came to any entity in the higher realms of cultivation, assuming that nothing dangerous could or would happen is beyond ludicrous.

This was proven soon after, as countless pitch black fingers, each the size of a Treading Earth’s leg, emerged from the breach and rushed up, surpassing the planar beast and then coming down upon it, forcefully pressing it down to the ground.

It caused the earth to rumble, and broke numerous dry wooden logs into pieces, but the area was already unrecognisable due to the spreading influence of the breach. The thing itself was huge, but it also dyed a vast area around it in a similar shade, and when Song Ming looked upon it, she could vaguely see phantoms of strange beings and creatures, though she could hardly identify any of them.

“I see… A fragment of this power became lodged within you. It belongs to me,” the voice behind them stated, and more fingers came out of the enormous breach, reaching into the Treading Earth’s core.

They rummaged around within for just a moment, then pulled something out and promptly retreated into the breach, with the other fingers following soon after, leaving the injured, bleeding Treading Earth on the ground, desperately attempting to rise back up. The powerful figure that had subdued it didn’t seem to care for it, nor for Song Ming and Kong Xi, who ended up witnessing the incident from the front seats.

She heard no follow-up from the figure, only the sound of another breach opening behind them, prompting her to turn and catch a look, however brief, of that figure.

He was still standing there, facing them and the Treading Earth. A man that was over two metres tall, dressed in black, hooded robes with ornamental shoulder plates and armour pieces that resembled numerous fingers interlocked together to form these shapes. His eyes gleamed with purple light, much akin to his breach, as if it was shining directly through his eyes. However, all of his actual flesh and body remained entirely obscured by shadow, even though sunlight should have been shining into his hood and revealing his face, not to mention the light from his eyes.

A breach snapped open behind him, and with a single step back, he vanished into it, with the breach vanishing a moment after. The breach shut, the huge breach beneath the Treading Earth disappeared, and it soon seemed as if the figure had never been there to begin with.

However, the Treading Earth itself had clearly been affected. Although the anchor still hovered above it, the gleaming silver rifts between its crimson bones were fading, and as it tried to stand back up, it was clearly unstable, struggling to endure the weight of its own body. It wouldn’t fall just from this, but it was clear that taking it down would be far easier.

She looked to Kong Xi, and he looked to her.

“That man-” she began, but he cut her off.

“Focus on the Treading Earth. Target the legs, then attack the core.”

Although it was the very thing she intended to suggest, she knew that it would be best not to argue. Instead, she made the first move and used what little of her energy remained to produce another construct of the Eidolon Lunge, slashing at the point in the Treading Earth’s leg that they had targeted before.

Her strike did not break the thin red bone, but it was just enough to force the beast to move in a way it did not wish to, causing the limb to snap.

It wobbled and desperately attempted to regain balance, only for Kong Xi to leap up and unleash the phantom of a charging bull alongside a stab of his spear, striking the weak point and causing the crimson bone to fracture, erupting into an explosion of tiny splinters. They scattered all over, nearly adding to Song Ming’s injuries, but that hardly mattered to her now. The mixture of everything that happened in such a short span of time was rather overwhelming, and with the intermitted flashes of pain and the continued sensation of strange energy within her, meant that there was only one thing on her mind now.

As soon as the beast’s centre crumbled to the ground, she rushed in and unleashed something, something that she couldn’t even identify. It wasn’t her planar energy, at least not in full, because she had not had the chance to recover it in between all of the attacks she had already performed.

The power came from somewhere deep within, a faint glimmering sensation that she unleashed in one mighty strike.

A radiant light burst out of her arm, following along her blade and surging out, rushing into the planar beast’s core. It expanded into a vast rune of unknown meaning, glowing within the Treading Earth’s centre, and a moment later, erupted into immutable light, tearing through the beast’s body and shredding it apart, a shockwave tearing through the dry forest and blowing away most of the dry leaves that still remained upon the branches.

Her strange sensation of energy faded, though she could still faintly perceive it within her.

‘I… I hope this is the end of all this…’ Song Ming felt the light fading from her vision, her legs wobbling and barely keeping her upright, “Kong Xi, I…”

“Hold on for just a moment!” he exclaimed while he rushed towards the body of the Treading Earth, rummaging around its insides before pulling out something small from within, “Quick, take this and direct your energy to it!”

She barely had the strength – or will – to ask, so she simply did it, inhaling some planar energy and trying her best to direct it throughout her meridians in order to claim it as her own. It was difficult, but it was something she had done for many years, so it required little thought on her part. Soon, when a few wisps of her energy recovered, she was able to direct it to the strange fleshy object she had been given, and felt it melt inside her.

The next moment, she felt a rush of heat flood her body, the glimmering sensation growing stronger as she felt herself cross an unseen edge. In an instant, she could feel the energy within her dantian grow denser as her cultivation stage rose, and her power grew by a single slight, yet vital step.

More importantly, the rush of energy was especially noticeable around her left elbow, centred around the wound that the Treading Earth had inflicted upon her.

In moments, it began to close up, recovering at a rapid pace, and before she could even appreciate the speed of her healing, it almost vanished – almost being the vital word. An obvious scar remained in place of it, red and unseemly when compared to her otherwise smooth and clean skin. It was as if it wished to remind her of the injury, of her inability, even when her body was left unharmed in the end.

“T-Thank you… What was that?” she asked, still feeling remnants of the initial rush.

“Some organs of these beasts have healing properties. Don’t ask what this one is – only some scholar in a sect would know for sure,” Kong Xi responded.

She wasn’t particularly reassured by that, but it did work out. Her left arm was able to move without issues, and although the scar was unpleasant, it would likely be hard to see once the redness faded. The jump in her cultivation stage was also a welcome one, and if she was able to tap into the glimmering energy within herself in the future, it might offer her a lot of advantages in… something. Song Ming was still unsure what it was, how it appeared, or why it did what it did against the Treading Earth.

“We need to return to the village. Bianca may be getting worried already.”

 

Meanwhile, Bianca gripped the knife tightly, her breathing heavy as she looked around with no lack of anxiety.

‘I wish Song Ming was here…’