The Laws of Cultivation: Qi = MC^2

Chapter [B4] 28 — Battle of Azure City

The time of battle arrived soon, and there was nothing left to do but to engage. I sat in the royal palace, the entire place nearly empty except for me. I’d sent everyone away, those who could fight were all stationed to fight. Those who could not were ready to help the injured or give support and protect the children and the elderly. Nearly everyone who lived within the city was contributing in some manner. This was life or death, not just for them, but for the entire empire, and they understood that as well.

I remained on the floor of the royal palace, this entire massive place now empty. I’d not set defenses around it. If the army could make it there, the war had already been lost. I had no intention of running away and trying to rebuild, no dreams of such. We won here, or we died fighting. Those were the only two options available to us.

I sat in the chamber, meditating upon Harmony, it flickered at the edge of my awareness, not quite present, not quite absent, in a state of in between that I’d come to understand as a powerful place in all things. And so, I found my mind’s eye expanding outwards, watching over the entire capital city as I did.

I watched the soldiers move, I watched men walking in lines, I heard their murmurs and whispers, of their encouragements and resolves. The demon army was coming from the northern end of the city, and so the civilians had all been moved to the south, behind the castle in the centre and as far away as possible from the demons.

If the demons took the capital, I intended to fight for as long as possible to let as many people get away to the south. I’d given instructions on where they’d need to move and how they could avoid being all caught by the demons.

It’d likely be my last act in this world, but it’d be something I’d gladly do, if it meant that I could protect people.

The demon army had stopped its march just a little ways outside of the capital. They did not not do anything like set up camps. Though I knew well enough that it was partly a facade, but their movements and actions were a reminder of the nature from which they were created.

Yet, despite that, the army loomed, standing in formations, clearly making its own preparations. And now the demons stood, lines with weapons, wearing armors and standing in rank and file.

There were soldier on our side. The northern end of the capital had been fortified with hefty formations and traps and many soldiers moved through those walls and walked atop. Cultivators filled the ranks, but for every cultivator there was, three mortals walked around, carrying rifles, explosives and the weapons that I’d had made to let them fight, to let them participate in this battle for their freedoms as well.

There was a long moment of tense silence. The world seemed to feel it as well, watching with a foreboding sensation as the demons stood around beyond the walls, waiting.

Then, something shifted, a roar came from the ranks as a hoarde of small, lesser demons rushed through the front ranks, moving rapidly towards the walls. Screams rose from the capital walls as well, the trebuchets that had been set upon the walls and loaded with giant rocks launched as they fired into the ranks, craching amidst the charging demons. But these rocks weren’t just rocks. Earth cultivators had worked tirelessly all night to empty them from the inside and make perfect shells that had then been stuffed with explosives on the inside. So as those boulders crashed, the explosives within ignited from the impact, sending flaming shards of rocks all across the ranks of the demons, tearing through them.

And yet the charge did not even slow down. The rest of the demon army ranks barely moved as the smaller demons continued to flood. Cannons fired from the walls, explosions taking out the demons by the dozens. Multiple trebuchets fired, and a squard of exploding arrows rained from the skies, as the world seemed to be bathed in fire for a long, terrible moment, that crackled with the fury of a thunderstorm. Nearly the entire section of smaller demons had died, but more simply continued to pour forth, stomping over the bodies of their dead comrades, rushing, fighting to be the first.

The ground fell beneath their feet as spikes skewered them. Land mines exploded from beneath sending blood and gore flying. And yet the demons continued. I realized with some shock what the purpose of all this was. They were sending those demons to die. To use their bodies to expose the traps, trigger the explosions and such to minimize the damage to their other forces.

It was the most brutal kind of tactic they could’ve used. Livestock or animals would not have been sufficient in the same way. Almost anything else would have a survival instinct and after some died, the rest would simply run away. You had to use these. Creatures with enough intelligence to willingly lay down their lives. For what? What purpose droves those demons to so eagerly jump to their deaths? Was it fear? Fear of what? What could anybody do that was worse than what they inflicted on themselves? I did not understood, but I felt the horror of it, as I watched their blood stain the earth red, a literal river of blood flowed from the areas, and even the attacks from the walls slowly began to quiet down, as everybody watched in quiet horror at the mass of flesh and blood that remained.

A single demon had made it across the walls, a single demon that had gotten there at the end, its scrawy, twisted body looking around in disbelief that it had survived. Behind it, a literal tide of flesh and blood of its remained, and yet when it turned, there was nothing for it to go to.

The demon remained there, silent, as the two armies reached a standstill. Then, the demon army, the real demon army began to move, and the sole surviving small demon scampered off, trying to escape before it got crushed to nothing.

Rounds of fire began from over the wall again, as my vision shifted. I drew upon a vast well of Qi, letting a sliver more flow into the defences, into the wards protecting the entrance. Then my vision shifted, as I looked at the charging ranks of the demon army. The front line of demons were taking up by giant beasts covered in armor. These creatures no longer resembled any animal but instead were an amalgam of multiple creatures, forming a twisted sot of monstrosity. But they were huge. I could feel the rage coming off of them. The earth shuddered, like an earthquake had arrived as the beasts charged, and a rally of attacks were launched from the wall, slamming into the creatures. Their armor had been made with special provisions in mind. The demons had been learning, making their own strategies against mine. They weren’t mindless fools, and it’d be stupid to expect them to simply keep doing what they’d always done. And so I hadn’t. Wooden machines rose from the walls, giant machines with levers and gears set within them. Four men stood behind, turning a lever within the machine as it rose and began to draw back on a drawstring, its aim being worked on and adjusted as the gears turned with a crackle. A harpoon reinforced with Qi sat inside it, glowing with power, and as one by one the ballistas took hold, there was a palpable tension as the men held their breath, grips tight on the powerful anchors holding the bolts in place.

With one command, the ballistas fired, nearly at once, the harpoons shooting towards the giant, rather hard to miss beast. The weapons struck, and the beasts roared, their armors and hides pierced by the heavy metallic bolts shot impossibly fast. Some bolts pieced the beasts skull, killing them with a single shot as they toppled over, crushing the demons around them. Most were not so lucky, but they did damage, and another rally of the weapons and bolts began to be wound.

The beasts slammed into the wall at last, shaking the entire thing. A pulse travelled through the wall, and for a moment it seemed as if it would fall, but the wall held, the ward on it glowing powerfully.

The beasts remained undeterred, starting to move back a little to slam into the walls once more as the rest of the demon army began to move in, but not all of them were as stupid.

Dark bolts made of Gu shot through the air, any hit by them froze, sometimes falling over the walls and dying, others slowly having the life within them be drained. I felt anger wash over me, but I knew anger would do nothing, only serve to break the Harmony I seeked to maintain, and so I calmed myself, and reached out to those people. Little spirit roots went into their spirits, draining the offending miasma, absorbing it entirely within itself and converting it to Chi. I could do little about the damage the bolt itself had cast. It was crude metal, almost rusting, and I did not know if it was due to the miasma or had the demons simply chosen such poor weapons, but it would do damage, they would need help.

Another row of demons convened, dark flames forming into balls of fire that slung towards the walls. Cultivators on the wall shot back with balls of water or blockades risen from earth, working together to counter them, but chaos had began to form, and people had begun dying.

I felt them, one after another, the agony, the pain, the suffering. To my surprise, many died with regret. Regret that they would not get to see the demons be beat. That kind of trust shook me, threatened to break me out of Harmony more than the anger even had. But those were not the only ones. There were those who died in fear, who died afraid of what was to come. Most died thinking of their families, of the loved ones they were fighting to protect.

Each one of those souls, I took them in. I took them within my embrace, I gave them a home, a place to settle into. They had given me their lives, it was my responsibility to see to it that they had a place to settle comfortably in death.

And yet, it was not just human souls that were rising. Demons, afterall, had souls too. A part of me had always wanted, hoped, that the souls of demons would be twisted, malignant things, I’d always envisioned them that way, but no, the souls were indifferent, the same as any other. Upon death, I often would not know whether the soul of someone had been a human, or a demon, not unless I paid careful attention and tried to look there specifically. For a little while I had considered abandoning their souls, they were the aggressors, the cause of all this suffering, but I had caught myself.

Ultimately, they too were just pawns, fighting in a war that they had been thrust into. And so I took in their souls as well. And it painted a whole other picture to me.

I saw brief flashes of their lives, of what they felt during the moments of their death. Beyond the rage, beyond the hate, beyond the anger bred by the Miasma, there was fear, there was longing, for something terrible that had been lost. Most of the souls simply seemed confused, as if unaware of where they were or what they had been doing. Like it was all a bad dream that they’d somehow been caught in.

And that was just the thing, wasn’t it? Those demons, they were human once, the were people once, it was the broken cycle of life and death which had made them what they are today, it had found them dragged into a war that had never been theirs to fight.

This level of violence, this level of senseless and meaningless death, it began to change me, began to alter something fundamental within me. I’d never felt like I had a stake in this war, a war between the empire and the demons. I had simply chosen the side my friends had belonged on. The side that I had felt was mostly right, that had a lot of good people, though maybe not all. But that illussion had been shattered. The empire had caused this.

No… not the empire. The divide in the cycle had caused this. The empire had simply continued the trend, followed the path that had been ordained, held onto the nature of the world as had been foretold that one day, when heaven and earth had diverged. A part of me wanted to blame the divine beasts for this. But I knew that part of me was simply angry and wanted a convenient and easy target to direct that anger towards. Nothing was ever that simple, or ever that convenient in life.

But I understood one thing now. This war was not just about protecting my loved ones anymore. I had a stake in this, I’d always had a stake in this, in seeing that this senseless cycle of violence come to end. I had a responsibility to the souls I held within myself, to give them true rest, to bring them back within the cycle of the world, to not let them simply wander through this world.

And so I reached out, and began to draw the souls within me. Almost like a call, whispering to them, and the souls flowed inwards, heading my way. And one by one, I felt them joining together, forming something. I could feel them beyond a thin line, to a place I did not truly have access to just yet, somewhere where souls went to in death, separated and kept apart from this world, it felt like a land of dreams, but I did not truly know or understand that, but I knew that it was important.

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I continued to watch the battle, meditating, settled into Harmony as I was. When the sun had begun to set down, I’d expected the battle to quiet down, but instead it had grown more intense. The demons seemed more comfortable in the cover of night, and far too eager to simply throw bodies in.

But humans needed rest still, and so people moved in and out, replaced by others, as the weary and tired took a moment to rest. And just like that, a new routine was formed for the city.

Battle would rage, day and night, and people would fight, and they would kill demons by the droves, while some would die. It continued like this, as one day turned into two, two into three, and soon a week had passed since the battle had began.

I did not move from where I had been, watching the events take place as they were. I’d not eaten or slept for the week that the fight had been happening. Most of my time had been spent gathering the souls, that had formed a solid mass of some sort as they sunk into the divine tree. It had begun projecting a kind of power, a faint and weak one for now, but one I did not interfere with. With my current state, I’d barely felt the need to rest, and I found myself unable to sit back with the war ongoing as it was, and so I’d continued on my task endlessly. Guiding the souls of the dead into a better place than the one they would likely have headed to.

There were only a few times I would interfere. I’d strike when deathless appeared and I’d burn them, purge their walking corpses and capture their souls, bringing them to rest. The message was clear enough. I would not interfere with my power in the war, not till they brought in immortal corpses, and then, they’d know my wrath.

But the routine could not last forever, and it only took a single moment for everything to change. A section of the wall was hit, a power strike from the demon crumbling the war protecting it at last, the crack had been enough as the demons had began flooding in. For a moment the soldiers had fought back but it was too late.

I watched the walls break and I gave the order to retreat. We’d been prepared for this eventuality as well. The outer wall of the city fell, as the soldiers retreated from the demons flooding in, lines and traps had been set, spiked walls, shields dug in, houses turned into giant explosive traps that’d shred anyone who entered. The front half of the city had been turned into a labyrinth for anyone to go through and so the soldiers retreated from the oncoming demons, watching the demons have to face a wave of traps that they set off before being picked apart by the weapons being shot as a push closed back in around the fall section of the wall.

As the push continued, a whirring noise was heard over the battlefield as aircrafts flew through the sky. They moved, high, like tiny birds. And then the first wave of bombs began to drop as chaos spread throughout the entire battle field. Void bombs shook the world, evaporating dozens of demons into nothingness as they struck from the skies. Multiple bolts and arrows and strikes from the demon’s side aimed to strike the aircrafts down, but the aircrafts swerved, deftly dodging. Many demons flew in the skies, to try and take down the aircrafts, but cultivators rose to the skies to intercept them, holding them back as the aircrafts quickly turned back around to return.

This became the new back and forth, waves of bombs being dropped as the demons slowly pushed their lines into the city, and then were pushed back by the soldiers, the traps and the repeated bombings. Had this been a mortal army, the war would’ve been ended by now, with so much death and loss, no one would’ve been able to keep fighting, but it became abundantly clear that this was anything but a mortal army. The demons tore through anything, fed on the corpses on the battlefield to sustain themselves and continued to pour in with no regards for their own lives. There was a steady stream of them, more and more reinforcing the army as they rose from beneath the earth, a nearly endless supply. Despite having the stronger army and stronger weapons by far, exhaustion from this ongoing war began to slowly drain the people.

I watched, distant, looking through only my mind, as the weeks went by in this steady back and forth of constant fighting and bloodshed, and a part of me ached. The pouring of souls was a burning thing in my chest, its power growing steadily and I could feel them all pulsing, beckoning me to do something. But those whispers were not the only one, those whispers were joined by others, not from souls, but from people. I could hear it, feel it within me, a constant pulse of emotion that had taken me a moment to understand. It was a wave of faith. A wave of devotion to me in a way that I had not understood, it flooded me, a separate kind of power in its entiretythat I didn’t really knew what to do with. But the more of it I obtained, the more it pushed me to act.

It took a force of will to hold myself back. Not yet. Not just yet. I had to wait, and I had to stay my hand. The real enemy had still not shown himself.

But, that did not mean I could do nothing, and so, as a group of deathless rose into the skies, the one place they’d realized I couldn’t reach them from. But I had a different method to reach them there.

I watched, as Zhang flew in the skies and then rushed forward. Gravity Chi surged around him as he moved, like a descending meteor from the skies, towards the deathless who did not know just what was coming their way.

***

Zhang moved through the skies with rapid speeds that he hadn’t known he could achieve up until this moment. He felt brother Jie’s hand, felt it reach him and call upon him and he’d known where to move. They’d all felt something similar, multiple times across this battlefield. Spirit roots that rose out of the ground, purging deathless in an instant, burning them alive and into nothing. Pulses of Qi that’d heal the injured, aid their recovery. But most of all, people had said they’d felt his presence around those who had just died, like a warm hand gently guiding them in.

Zhang did not know if brother Jie was doing that or not. He knew that his brother was very special and he’d believe it if told so, but he did not know whether someone could truly guide the souls of others. That felt like an act of god in a way his other miracles didn’t. It was different. Fundamentally divine.

The effect had been slow but potent. More than one person had began worshiping him. This endless war had ground down people’s souls, but crops grew bountifully to feed the people, those with injuries would find themselves healing faster than they likely would’ve. Those with severe injuries would recover in days instead of weeks, and things like that mattered. Things like that changed people. Each inch of land that the demons claimed in the city, they had to send a thousand bodies in to die for. And they’d just as often lose it too.

A combination of those factors, and people were starting to believe he was sent from the very heavens. Zhang knew that wasn’t true. He’d known brother Jie for some time and he hadn’t descended from the heavens. But a part of him had started questioning it for a moment.

The boy had told him of his home, and he knew it was not a place from here. A mystical place from beyond, a place beyond this one with mystical things miracles being done commonly.

That sounded quite heavenly to him. And so now he wondered. Were those people right. Was his brother truly sent by some god? He did not know. He did not understand these things. But that faith those people had felt for brother Jie, he’d felt that from the very beginning. Felt it burn in his soul, when he’d been saved by the boy all that time ago, and then again, when he was shown a brand new path.

They gave him all these names. The Divine Child, the Son of Heaven, the Heavenly Sage. None of those names mattered to him. The reality of whether Brother Jie was truly from heaven and had come here to save them all did not matter to him. He worshipped the man who he had sworn as a brother. And that was all that mattered to him.

It was with those thoughts that Zhang moved forward, the deathless sneered, as they always did, they always had a veneer of arrogance. He had wondered why before and when he’d asked brother Jie, he’d found the answer. They’d been cultivators in life. And whatever process had changed them and turned them into these walking corpses, had not changed their attitudes towards the world around them.

The demon in front of him blabbed, announcing his name and something or the other about how exactly he was going to tear Zhang limb from limb. Zhang did not listen, did not pay the demon any attention whatsoever. He simple continued moving, not slowing down as the demon’s blabbing paused, surprise taking over him. Then the creature tried to move out of the way, but it was too late. Zhang’s body was heavy. Really really heavy. He had made it so with the gravity he commanded, and so he struck the creature with the force of a mountain, crashing into it as they both landed beyond the walls, in the midst of the demon army with a burning strike that left a crafter behind in their wake, sending bodies sprawling all over.

Zhang rose, and then paused. To the demon’s credit, it had survived the impact. But Zhang did not give it any time. Moving his spear, Zhang cut the creature’s head off, and then its limbs, but he knew that would not be enough, and so he did something else.

He created a well of gravity around the demon, one that sucked everything in. The creature’s body began to pull inwards on itself, as it began to heal but it would not get the time. He continued to make the well smaller, the force pulling the demon upon itself getting narrower and narrower. At the start the creature’s decapitated head had been smiling, but soon its eyes were bulging as its bones and flesh began to fold upon each other. Zhang did not relent. The well continued to become smaller, the mass of flesh pushing inwards and inwards and inwards. Zhang pressed, raising the force of his Chi, and soon the demon was into a tiny ball of flesh that could fit in his hand. He did not stop there. He pushed even further, till the well was a small ball, and he pushed further still. He kept pushing and pushing till the mass of flesh was smaller than the eye of a needle, and then he felt something shift. His Chi, his well of gravity fundamentally altered as something collapsed. Reality popped a hole inside of it as darkness spilled out for an instant, swallowing everything around it for just one second, before vanishing out of existence.

He nodded, satisfied. He’d been taught that one by Brother Jie. Of these things out in the great beyond, that were so small and so dense that they pulled everything into them. He could not do that, that sort of power sounded beyond even the realm of gods to him, but he could mimics something similar.

All of that had taken a few seconds to happen. In a few seconds, the deathless had simply been erased, and as he looked around, he saw demons staring at him, eyes wide in shock and horror at what they’d seen happen. He moved and the demons stepped back, fear palpable on their faces as he realized just how he must have looked in this moment. He’d done it with the calmness he always kept on his face, but it had been a terrible way of death that he imagined even demons would fear.

Then he felt the shift happen, felt it more in his soul than anything as one moment he’d been standing, the next he had been flung across the world and crashed through the wall, bringing down another segment. If it had not been for his reflexes being sharp enough to reinforce his body he’d be dead. Zhang flew through the city, crashing through houses at rapid speeds as he finally landed. His bones had broken and been crushed, and his ribs had nearly been turned to dust from the impact. He coughed blood, surprised he was alive at all.

His eyes dropped, his body slowly falling, as he felt the certain and cold grasping touch of death reaching for him. His mind was too frayed to even make sense of what had happened, the world just a blur of colors dancing in his eyes.

Then he felt something stir in his chest. That unshaken faith in his heart, it seemed to expand to cover his body, that other something that he felt when he looked at Brother Jie and reaffirmed his resolve for the man, it turned into something greater, something beyond just him and he felt the distinct presence of Lu Jie touch upon his soul, a gentle, warm presence.

Ah… was this it then? Had his brother come to take his soul? Perhaps that would not be the worst kind of end.

But it seemed his brother had other ideas, as he felt the man’s will surge into him, and his body, extremely painfully, began to stitch itself back together rapidly, a single word echoing in his entire being.

“Heal.”

And so, despite not having any strength left to do so, he obeyed, as his body healed itself, patched itself back near instantly with so much pain that he screamed despite not having any energy to do so.

Mercifully, it was over soon, as Zhang opened his eyes. The first thing he felt was his spear. It lay broken next to him, torn into fragments. A moment of grief passed over him.

Then he looked ahead and saw someone standing there. Guarding him from any further attack.

It was a man, he wore red robes and there was a heat to his presence. A burning sort of power that permeated his entire body. The symbol of fire was marked onto his robes. Huo.

Zhang recognized him as the Huo Patriarch. One of the Divinities.

“You’ve done enough boy. Return and rest, I will take care of things here,” the man said, and then whispered something he likely thought Zhang could not hear. He would not have heard it, really, had he not been brought back from the bring and death and healed in what turns out had been mere moments.

“And we cant’ afford that boy losing his mind if you were to die.”

Zhang nodded, and pulled himself up, he gathered his Chi, taking to the skies as he moved back. But he took a moment to look on the other side.

There, in the distance, stood a demon, whose presence he could feel even from here. A vile front of power ran through that man, and Zhang understood what that creature was.

A Demonic Divinity.

It was a miracle that he was alive at all. He figured if he had not been healed like that, he would’ve died in moments. Counting his blessings, Zhang began to move back to settle in with the rest of the soldiers.

If the demons were sending out Divinities, then the face of this battle was about to change quite rapidly.