Book 6: Chapter 3: Here, There Be Monsters
Sen had seen a lot of strange spirit beasts in the depths of the wilds, from the damnable bear-cats to birds made entirely of fire. Hed even once been attacked by something that looked like the bastard child of a pangolin and a massive ivy plant. However, all of his experience with spirit beasts had happened on land. Most of his incredibly limited experience with water life extended only to fish. Hed heard about other kinds of sea animals and spirit beasts from Captain Chen but that had been poor preparation for the thing that launched from the surface of the ocean. As it drove upward, the water swelled briefly like a wet dome or some kind of bubble. When the dome burst, Sens mind didnt know what to do with the information it received.
The front half of the spirit beast was a sleek body covered in black, leathery skin that looked ideal for cutting through the water. Fins covered in that same leathery skin protruded from both sides of its body. Yet they glinted like polished glass in the sunlight, and he could see the razor edge. Those pieces of information immediately dropped into the background as he noticed other, far more pressing details. The creature had no eyes. Sen didnt know why but that bothered him on an atavistic level. It created a revulsion so profound that he wanted this thing dead on sight. As soon as that passed through his mind, it was shunted aside as the blunt nose of the beast spread wide into a gaping maw. Where he had expected to see teeth, there were rows and rows of jagged, broken black crystals. He shuddered at the thought of how those crystals would rend and tear flesh. Even worse, he could imagine those crystals burying themselves inside flesh and then breaking off. Considering the condition of the ones he could see, it seemed not only plausible but likely.
The beast released a primitive roar that would have shredded the eardrums of anyone without some serious body cultivation behind them. Even at a remove, that roar drove a stench of rotting flesh and death up at Sen the likes of which hed never experienced. That all-consuming smell was like an attack of its own that momentarily stunned him. He felt like hed stepped into some kind of abattoir that had been left to bake in the high heat of summer. As if all of that hadnt been enough to assure Sen that this beast was alien in ways that nothing on land could ever be, the bottom half of the creature finally emerged from the depths and into the light. Where hed expected to see some kind of tail, the back half of the beast bloomed outward like a grotesque flower composed of tentacles instead of petals. The color of the tentacles bled away from black and into a mottled pattern of dark and light grays. A handful of the tentacles were thick as trees, while most were smaller. Sen did note that every single one of the tentacles ended in a crystal spike.
Worse, he felt dense concentrations of qi in every one of those crystals. Now that the beast was out of the water, he could feel that its cultivation was greater than his. He thought it was the equivalent of peak core formation, which put its actual power somewhere in the low nascent soul range if the usual power disparity between spirit beasts and human cultivators held true. Since he had no reason to doubt that the spirit beasts from the sea enjoyed that advantage, a sliver of real worry blossomed in his mind. Sure, hed beaten a nascent soul cultivator, once, but hed planned that confrontation out with some real care and cheated outrageously with borderline insane poisons. Hed used his understanding of human greed to trick the other cultivator into a situation where Sen had prepared the ground. This situation was nothing like that one. He didnt even know what the spirit beast was, let alone the best ways to fight it. And they were fighting near, if not directly in, the beasts natural environment.
Still, there was no turning back now. He minimally needed to keep the beast occupied long enough for the ship to escape. There were two main routes to achieving that end. He could get the beasts attention and try to draw it away with ranged attacks. The other and what felt to Sen like the less viable option was to kill the beast outright. He genuinely didnt like his chances in that kind of a fight without a much better understanding of what the twisted beast could actually do. Distraction and evasion it is, thought Sen. He wasnt above a fight to the death, but he wasnt prepared to commit to that unless it became completely unavoidable. With his decision made, he made a few educated guesses about what would hurt something that lived in the ocean the most.
He cycled for fire, made the biggest fireball he could, and shot it into the open maw that was racing up toward him at shocking speed. He shifted the platform of qi he was standing on and used the ridiculous strength in his legs to launch himself out of the path of the beasts open jaws. At least, that was the plan. As the fireball hurtled into that terrifying, rapidly approaching mouth and down the beasts gullet, it roared in pain. Sen didnt even see the tentacle that whipped up to drive straight at his chest. He felt the crystal on the end of it thrumming with qi. Years of battle experience took over. Sen drove all the lightning qi he could muster into the spearhead and swung it down to meet the assault. The spearhead connected with the crystal at the end of one of the massive tentacles and shattered it, which had gone according to plan. The explosion of ice qi that drove crystal shards in every direction was not according to plan.
Dozens of cuts opened up across Sens body. He could have ignored that, having done so hundreds of times in the last half-decade. What he couldnt ignore was the shard of crystal that shot into his stomach and right out of his back. He also couldnt ignore that the explosion of qi had carried him up and away from the beast an odd angle that sent him miles farther out to sea. He was momentarily numb from the shock and the sheer concussive force of the blast. Then, the agony hit him as remnant ice qi from the crystal tried to freeze his internal organs. Sen had endured a thousand shades of pain, but this was something unexpected and new. He felt it as the qi tried to turn his lung into something that would splinter into tiny fragments at a tap. He felt it encroaching on his heart, slowing the movement of the muscle and the flow of blood through his body. Body cultivators were robust, but Sen doubted that even he could survive it if his heart froze and shattered. None of the alchemical fixes in his storage rings could bring him back from that.
The stark realization that he was moments from death shocked Sen back into rationality. He swiftly started cycling for fire qi again and flooded his torso with it. He had assumed that would be an easy solution, but it wasnt. Even though the body naturally rejected foreign qi and even though he was saturating his tissues with qi that it should readily drink up, he just barely managed to stop the spread of the ice qi. He redoubled his efforts, condensing the fire qi into something that hed normally consider dangerous for a human body. The ice qi fought his fire qi for what felt like centuries in Sens mind. Yet, for all the brute strength of that ice qi, it was limited while Sen had a full dantian and core to draw on. With a final burst of effort, he expelled the ice qi. He worried it might attack him again, but it was quickly swallowed up by the absurd levels of water qi in the environment. Sen almost heaved a sigh of relief. Then, blood burst from the open wound in his stomach, no longer trapped in place by the ice.
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Previously frozen and numb injuries came alive with vibrant agony that shot through Sen like bolts of tribulation lightning. He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to assess the situation. While it had felt like an eternity to him, Sen realized it had only been a few seconds. He was still hurtling away from the beast and the ship. The beast was just starting to drop back towards the water, its agonized roars from Sens two attacks still ringing in the air. Sen focused and manifested a qi platform to arrest his flight. He didnt grasp how fast he was moving until he crashed straight through the platform, crying out in pain as fresh gouts of blood burst from his open wounds. When the white flash that erased all thought from his mind passed, he tried again. He took a different tack, coating his body in qi and expanding it to slow his wild flight through the air. He came to a stop and simply flopped down onto the qi platform.
Part of him was certain that this was a losing battle and that retreat was the best option. Unfortunately, it was only the best option for him. If he left now, the enraged beast would likely kill everything it could find in the immediate area. He considered if he could simply carry the crew away on a qi platform to save them as he summoned his best healing elixir from a ring and downed it in a gulp. He thought it might be possible to carry them away like that, but he wasnt confident he could carry the entire lot to shore before his body needed rest. Even if he did manage to do that, they werent close to anything like civilization. Hed have to escort the entire crew through the wilds. That could take weeks or months. It would also deprive Captain Chen of his livelihood. I could just buy him another boat, thought Sen. It was a legitimate option, but it depended on getting everyone to shore. Chen would never abandon his men, and Sen wasnt sure he could save them all that way.
Sen knew that was probably still the smartest move. Unfortunately, it also assumed that he could outrun that beast. It also assumed that the beast wouldnt follow them onto the land. It might prefer the sea, but that was no guarantee that it couldnt go onto land for short periods of time. No, thought Sen, I need to deal with this here and now. Teeth clenched and hand pressing against the wound in his stomach, Sen pushed himself up to a standing position on the platform. The beast was raging and thrashing in the water. That was a relief since it might have gone directly for the ship. Sen closed his eyes and took a breath. He was too far away for any of the things that he'd normally use to end a fight immediately. He needed something else. Something that could actually travel that far and hold together. A memory surfaced of his fight with that young dragon on his way back to Fu Ruolans. He nodded. That would do for now.
Sen started cycling for wind and fire. Back during that fight, hed sent out a wind blade followed by fire. Hed do something a little different this time. As the qi built up, he started weaving the fire and air together into a braid of something far deadlier than either could be alone. He built the technique up, layer by destructive layer, as he fought against the water qi that saturated the area. He condensed that braided qi, squeezing the technique into something ever more compact with a force of will built in battles against countless cultivators more powerful than himself, against beast tides, against the will of the heavens itself. He swept the spear in front of him in a shallow arc. A blade of fire fifty feet across exploded into existence. It was so bright that it eclipsed the sun and so hot that the surface of the seawater nearly a hundred feet below started to boil. In the blink of an eye, it shot away from Sen and toward the beast.
The beast sensed the incoming attack and whirled its massive body toward the fiery death bearing down on it. Sen was once more appalled that anything so large could possibly move so fast. All of the tentacles swept forward around the beast like a cocoon with the crystals touching each other. A wall of ice formed in front of the beast just moments before the combined blade of fire and wind crashed into it. There was a blast of force and steam that sent a huge wave out in every direction. Panic seized Sens heart as his eyes swept toward the ship. Sen dropped everything else as he put his all into cycling for water. He poured liquid qi and core qi into the hasty technique he was building.
He ignored the fact that he was falling out of the sky. He ignored the blood that was pouring from his wounds, from his nose, and his ears. All he cared about was driving that qi down into the water. He felt it race toward that wave that would crush the ship. He pushed the technique forward with his will, with his heart, with his very soul. The technique caught the wave and unleashed his intent. The wave split around the tiny vessel like a blade had cut the water. Sen gave himself a mere moment to feel exultant triumph before he had to once more look to his survival. He managed to catch himself before he hit the water at lethal speeds, although the qi platform did plunge beneath the waves. Exhaustion burned in Sen as he forced the platform to carry him back up into the air.
He looked to where the steam was finally clearing away. He groaned as he saw the spirit beast thrashing weakly in the water. Sen knew he wasnt thinking clearly, but he also knew that he couldnt leave that thing alive. The qi platform rose up in the air again and sluggishly carried him in a mostly straight line toward the beast. Sen was cycling the entire way. He was shocked to find that his qi reserves werent the problem. He had plenty of qi left. Focus was the problem. He was hurt. Hed already overtaxed his limits to craft that water technique and get to the ship in time. It took all of his meager mental resources to put together what he expected to be the last big technique hed do for a while. When he got close enough, he could see that the spirit beast had taken hideous damage. Most of its tentacles looked like theyd been torn apart or seared away to half their original length. The front half of the beast was charred and blistered. Sen stared down at the thing with baleful eyes. Then, he lifted his spear toward the sky. Lightning lanced upward. He felt the qi moving through the atmosphere and gathering strength. Then, a bolt of lightning fell from the heavens like divine judgment and punched into the beast. It let out one final wail of pain and despair before Sen felt its life drain away in his spiritual sense.
Unwilling to let this fight have no benefits, Sen found the strength and focus to split the beast in half with a massive wind blade. He dropped into the stinking burned remains of the beast and, a minute or two later, he rose from those remains with a beast core the size of a large melon. Sen deposited the core in a storage ring and drifted back to the ship. He dropped onto the deck and looked around at the crew. Most stared at him in slack-jawed awe. The rest looked stunned. He met the eyes of Captain Chen and gave the man a bloody-toothed grin.
Well, that was exciting, mumbled Sen before he collapsed to the deck.
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