Chapter Eighty-One: When the Sky Hunts
Twenty days had passed since the caravan left Mistforge.
Under ordinary circumstances, that would have been encouraging.
Goldriver City was no longer some distant name at the end of a month-long journey. Elder Liang estimated another seven days if the roads remained good, ten at most if weather or terrain forced them to slow down. The landscape had changed considerably since Mistforge. The severe northern mountains had softened into rolling highlands covered by sparse woodland, while the great river they had been following continued beside them, broad and grey beneath the morning sky. Trees crowded its banks, their roots reaching down toward the water, and beyond them stretched wooded country broken occasionally by cliffs and low mountains. It was good traveling land. There had been no sect cultivators stopping them since yesterday, no bandits foolish enough to trouble the Wolf Brigade, and no monster powerful enough to make the guards do more than reach casually for their weapons.
Everything was going smoothly.
Elder Ruan hated it.
He had been uncomfortable since sunrise.
At first, he had blamed the feeling on the previous days. Too many things had gone wrong recently. Too many strangers had stopped them. Too many times he had needed to consider whether a conversation might become a battle. It was natural for an experienced warrior to remain tense afterward.
Except his wolf felt it too.
The old Frost Wolf padded alongside him, armored paws moving silently over the road. Baifeng had been Ruan's partner for decades. Scars crossed the enormous wolf's muzzle and disappeared beneath the armor covering his shoulders. One ear had a piece missing from an old battle. Ruan knew every expression the creature possessed.
Baifeng kept looking at the sky.
Something is wrong.
Ruan's eyes moved over the surrounding woodland.
"I know."
He had already changed their route twice.
The first time, they abandoned the easier ground close to the river because Baifeng refused to settle. The second time, Ruan sent scouts ahead and moved the caravan several li inland after one of the wolves began whining at something it could not identify.
Nothing changed.
The pressure remained.
Not killing intent.
Not exactly.
It was something older and simpler.
The instinct of an animal that knew a larger animal was somewhere nearby.
Elder Liang rode beside him. "Still?"
Ruan nodded.
Liang looked around.
Nothing.
That was the problem.
The birds were still singing. The river still flowed. The wind still moved through the branches.
Yet Baifeng's fur was standing upright.
Ruan made his decision.
"All units alert."
The response was immediate.
The casual atmosphere vanished.
Wolf riders tightened formation around the carriages. Guards checked weapons. Bao Kun's shield squad shifted toward the outer line. Shen Rui climbed onto one of the rear carriages to gain a better view. Elder Liang immediately began calculating routes ahead, his gaze moving between the road, river, forest and rising mountains to the west.
Inside the carriages, conversations stopped.
Yun Che looked up from the piece of metal he had been engraving.
Lin Xia lowered her notebook.
Jin Wei swallowed.
"What now?"
"I don't know."
That was somehow worse.
The caravan continued.
One minute passed.
Then another.
Baifeng stopped.
His head snapped upward.
Ruan followed his gaze.
The roar arrived.
It did not sound like an animal.
It sounded as though the sky itself had discovered hatred.
The first wave struck the caravan physically. Trees shook. Leaves exploded from branches. The river's surface rippled outward in thousands of overlapping rings. Yun Che felt the sound pass through the carriage walls, through his bones and directly into some ancient part of his mind that had existed long before language.
His body stopped obeying him.
Outside, Mountain Chargers screamed.
One collapsed onto its front knees.
Another tried to turn.
A third simply froze.
The carriage behind it smashed into the suddenly stationary vehicle.
Wood cracked.
People shouted.
Jin Wei was thrown from his seat.
Lin Xia struck the wall shoulder-first.
Yun Che caught himself with telekinesis and looked through the window.
Something enormous passed across the clouds.
His breath stopped.
"No."
Far above the woodland, a creature spread wings vast enough to cast a moving shadow over the trees.
It was nearly a hundred meters from head to tail.
Black dominated its body, but crimson patterns spread across its enormous wings in intricate branching shapes, beautiful enough that Yun Che's mind absurdly compared them to stained glass. Black spines ran from the creature's neck along its back. Two swept horns crowned its head, and its long tail narrowed into a vicious stinger-like point.
Then it turned.
Yun Che saw its eyes.
Pitch black.
One thin crimson ring surrounded each pupil.
The gaze passed over the fleeing creatures below with unmistakable intelligence.
And amusement.
Lei Zhenyu had gone completely still.
"Crimson Calamity Wyvern."
Yun Che looked at him.
"You know it?"
"Everyone knows it."
That was not reassuring.
Outside, Elder Liang had recognized it too.
"That shouldn't be here!"
Ruan drew his blade.
"No."
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern belonged to Dragonfall Rift, the vast wild valley between Yuncang and the neighboring kingdom to the west. It was a place where draconic bloodlines had gathered for thousands of years. Drakes, wyverns, lesser dragons and things with bloodlines too mixed to classify fought continuously throughout its mountains.
People avoided Dragonfall Rift.
Armies avoided Dragonfall Rift.
Even sects entered it carefully.
Crimson Calamity Wyverns were among its infamous predators.
And this one was Seventh Stage Foundation.
The ground began shaking.
At first Yun Che thought it was the wyvern.
Then he saw the trees moving.
Not swaying.
Falling.
"Stampede!" someone screamed.
The forest behind them erupted.
A herd of enormous shaggy beasts smashed through the tree line first, each resembling a yak grown to the size of a house, curved horns tearing branches apart as they ran. Behind them came thick-bodied ox monsters with stone-like plates across their heads. Mammoth creatures thundered among them, trunks raised in terror, while smaller deer-like monsters darted between their legs.
Predators ran beside prey.
That told Yun Che everything.
Great cats.
Armored wolves.
Long-legged reptiles.
None were hunting.
All were fleeing.
Above them came the birds.
Thousands.
The sky darkened beneath wings.
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern roared again.
The stampede accelerated.
"MOVE!"
Ruan released his intent.
The force struck the caravan like cold water.
The Mountain Chargers jolted awake.
Baifeng threw his head back.
His howl answered the wyvern.
Every Frost Wolf joined him.
The combined cry tore through the paralysis gripping the beasts.
Elder Liang was already moving.
"You four! Chargers!"
Four Foundation guards jumped from their wolves and landed upon the lead Mountain Chargers.
Liang took the first.
His telekinesis spread outward.
Not enough to lift the caravan.
He did not try.
Instead, he removed burdens.
A wheel suddenly weighed less as it crossed a rut.
A carriage tilted and an invisible force pushed it upright.
Harnesses tightened at exactly the correct angle.
Loose stones flew from the road before hooves could strike them.
Every movement was tiny.
Calculated.
Perfect.
"Run!"
The cultivators poured Ki into the Mountain Chargers.
Muscles hardened.
Hooves struck.
The caravan surged forward.
Wind screamed past the windows.
Yun Che grabbed the wall.
Jin Wei stared outside.
"I would like to formally request that our next journey be extremely boring."
Nobody answered.
The stampede was gaining.
The Wolf Brigade became something entirely different when retreating.
There was no panic.
No attempt to kill everything.
Every guard understood the objective.
Keep the caravan moving.
Bao Kun planted himself on the rear platform of the fifth carriage.
His massive shield unfolded.
"Guardian Formation!"
Five shields answered.
Golden Ki spread between them.
Hexagons appeared.
Yun Che's attention snapped toward them despite everything.
The barriers linked.
One became six.
Six became dozens.
A huge curved wall formed behind the caravan.
The first beast struck it.
An enormous horned ox.
BOOM.
Bao Kun's boots carved grooves through the carriage platform.
"Hold!"
Another struck.
Then another.
The barrier cracked.
Bao Kun roared and angled his shield.
That small movement changed everything.
The next beast did not strike directly.
It slid.
Its horns scraped across the curved barrier, momentum carrying it sideways until it crashed into another fleeing monster.
"Don't stop them!" Bao shouted. "Turn them!"
His squad understood.
The shield formation shifted continuously, becoming less a wall than a wedge guiding the stampede around the caravan.
Not every predator cooperated.
A six-legged cat leapt from the stampede.
Its fear had apparently not overcome its hunger.
It landed on the rear carriage.
Shen Rui landed on it.
His boots struck the creature's back.
The monster twisted.
Shen Rui drove one blade into the armored ridge beside its neck—not deep enough to kill, but enough to anchor himself.
"Wrong carriage."
The beast screamed.
Shen Rui released his blade and kicked.
Ki exploded from his heel.
The predator flew sideways into the stampede.
Shen Rui jumped after it.
"SHEN RUI!" Bao shouted.
"I'M COMING BACK!"
He landed on the back of a fleeing mammoth.
Ran along its spine.
Jumped.
Landed on a horned ox.
Jumped again.
A bird swept toward him.
Shen Rui ducked beneath its talons, caught one leg and used its momentum to swing himself forward.
He released it.
Turned.
And landed on the carriage.
Bao stared at him.
Shen Rui straightened his coat.
"What?"
"You're an idiot."
"You're jealous."
Another monster attacked.
They returned to work.
At the very rear rode Elder Ruan.
That was where the fighting was worst.
Baifeng ran beneath him while Ruan's water moved like something alive.
The river was nearly a hundred meters away.
It did not matter.
Water tore from it in glittering streams, crossed the woodland and gathered around Ruan.
A mammoth charged.
Ruan flicked two fingers.
The water became a whip.
CRACK.
It wrapped around one tusk.
Ruan pulled.
Not against the mammoth's strength.
Across it.
Its head twisted just enough.
The mammoth stumbled sideways.
Baifeng breathed.
Frost coated the earth beneath its feet.
The enormous creature slipped and crashed into the mud, forcing the beasts behind it to divide around the obstruction.
Another predator leapt.
Ruan's whip became a blade.
One movement.
Blood sprayed.
The creature fell.
Three wolf monsters rushed from behind.
Ruan did not turn.
His fingers closed.
The water inside the nearest wolf's mouth suddenly surged down its throat.
It choked.
Its stride broke.
It crashed into the second.
Baifeng slammed shoulder-first into the third and threw it aside.
A giant bird descended.
Ruan raised his palm.
A sphere of water appeared.
The bird struck it.
The barrier deformed rather than broke, absorbing the impact before rebounding.
The bird was thrown upward.
Ruan looked back.
The stampede was still coming.
Too many.
"Faster!"
At the front, Liang heard him.
His eyes were everywhere.
Road gradient.
Wheel rotation.
Distance between carriages.
Mountain Charger breathing rates.
Upcoming terrain.
Stampede velocity.
River depth.
Tree density.
"Three degrees right!"
The lead driver obeyed without asking why.
A moment later, an enormous boulder crashed down exactly where the caravan would have been.
"Left wheel light!"
Telekinesis lifted it over a broken section of road.
"Third carriage, brace!"
The carriage struck a root.
Liang's telekinesis caught it.
The entire vehicle tilted onto two wheels.
Lin Xia screamed.
Yun Che threw out his own telekinesis instinctively.
For half a second, their forces overlapped.
The carriage slammed upright.
Liang glanced back once.
Yun Che saw him.
Then the elder returned to the road.
There would be time to acknowledge it later.
If there was a later.
Above them, the Crimson Calamity Wyvern watched.
And Yun Che gradually understood something horrible.
It was not chasing them.
Not really.
It would disappear behind the clouds.
Then dive.
Every creature below would panic.
The wyvern would pull up before touching anything.
Once it flew so low over the stampede that the tips of its wings clipped treetops, sending entire trunks spinning through the air.
It could have killed dozens.
It killed none.
It wanted them running.
The realization spread among the guards.
Lei Zhenyu looked upward.
"It is playing."
Yun Che felt sick.
The wyvern climbed.
Turned.
Folded its wings.
It dropped directly toward the caravan.
"INCOMING!"
Everyone braced.
The creature descended like a falling mountain.
One hundred meters.
Fifty.
Twenty.
Yun Che saw its claws.
Its black eyes.
Its open jaws.
Amon roared beneath the illusion cloth covering him.
Then the wyvern opened its wings.
The pressure alone flattened trees.
The caravan shook violently.
The wyvern passed overhead.
It had never intended to attack.
Its head turned as it flew past.
The crimson-ringed eye looked directly at the caravan.
Yun Che could have sworn it was enjoying itself.
Then it climbed again.
"This thing is insane," Jin Wei whispered.
"No," Lei said.
His expression was grim.
"It is bored."
That was worse.
The chase continued.
The Mountain Chargers were running beyond what their bodies should have managed, Foundation cultivators continuously reinforcing them. Foam gathered around their mouths. Their eyes rolled with exhaustion.
The stampede was still behind them.
The wyvern climbed higher.
Yun Che watched it.
Something changed.
The crimson patterns across its wings began glowing.
Lei saw it too.
His face changed.
"Ruan!"
The warning came too late.
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern spread its wings.
Dark crimson energy gathered between them.
Not fire.
Not lightning.
Something else.
Something that made every living thing nearby recoil.
Trees bent away from it.
Leaves blackened.
Birds scattered.
Even Yun Che's skin crawled.
A sphere formed before the wyvern.
Black at its center.
Crimson around its edge.
"DEATH ESSENCE!" Lei shouted.
The wyvern released it.
Not at the caravan.
Ahead of them.
The sphere crossed kilometers in seconds.
It struck the road.
There was no explosion at first.
Only silence.
Then the world turned black and red.
The blast expanded across the landscape.
Trees withered instantly.
Grass became grey.
Flowers collapsed.
Insects fell from the air.
The soil itself lost color.
A circle hundreds of meters across became dead.
Nothing burned.
Nothing remained alive.
Elder Liang stared.
"RIGHT!"
The caravan turned.
Too sharply.
The first carriage nearly overturned.
Liang caught it with telekinesis.
The second smashed into its rear corner.
Wood exploded.
A wheel cracked.
The Mountain Chargers screamed as harnesses pulled sideways.
One fell.
A guard jumped down, cut the harness and pushed the animal upright before the next carriage could crush it.
"MOVE!"
There was no choice.
They could not cross the dead zone.
Yun Che could feel it from here.
Life-draining power lingered across the ground like invisible poison.
Anything entering it would weaken.
Perhaps die.
The wyvern screamed overhead.
Not anger.
Delight.
It had changed their direction.
Yun Che looked ahead.
His stomach dropped.
"No."
The river and forest lay to their left.
The safe road had followed them.
The death zone blocked the way ahead.
Their forced turn took them west.
Toward the mountains.
Liang realized it too.
"It is herding us."
Ruan looked upward.
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern circled lazily.
"Bastard."
Another false dive came.
The Mountain Chargers panicked.
The caravan surged farther west.
Trees thinned.
Rock replaced soil.
The ground began climbing.
The broad road disappeared beneath them until it became little more than an old mountain track.
The carriages bounced violently.
One axle screamed.
Lin Xia grabbed Yun Che's arm as their carriage tilted toward the cliff.
Yun Che shoved outward with telekinesis.
The wheels slammed back down.
Behind them came the stampede.
The terrain compressed it.
That was the worst part.
In the open woodland, beasts had spread across hundreds of meters.
Here they could not.
Cliffs rose on one side.
Broken slopes dropped on the other.
Thousands of terrified monsters were being forced into the same narrow corridor.
Bao Kun looked back.
His face went pale.
"That's bad."
The shield squad formed again.
The first beasts hit.
BOOM.
The entire rear carriage jumped.
Bao's barrier fractured.
"AGAIN!"
Hexagons reformed.
Another impact.
Cracks spread.
Shen Rui leapt onto a charging beast and drove it sideways.
Ruan's water whip snapped across another.
Baifeng froze the ground.
Liang shouted directions from the front.
The Wolf Brigade fought not to win.
Only to gain seconds.
One second.
Then another.
Then another.
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern glided above them.
It barely moved its wings.
It watched the tiny caravan struggling along the mountain road.
Watched the stampede closing behind it.
Watched the guards fight.
Watched the carriages break.
Watched the people inside desperately trying to survive.
Yun Che looked through the window.
For a moment, the wyvern turned its head.
Those pitch-black eyes found him.
A red ring narrowed.
Yun Che felt something cold move through his stomach.
He had seen beasts hunting before.
Hungry beasts.
Territorial beasts.
Angry beasts.
Protective beasts.
This was different.
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern was not hungry.
If it had been hungry, someone would already be dead.
It could descend whenever it wanted.
It could tear apart the Mountain Chargers.
It could pick a carriage from the road.
It could kill half the stampede with a single attack.
Instead it had blocked the road.
Driven them away from the river.
Forced them toward the mountains.
Narrowed their escape.
It was making the chase harder because that made the chase more interesting.
Amon's voice entered Yun Che's mind.
Quiet.
Angry.
That thing is not hunting.
Yun Che watched the enormous creature circle.
"I know."
The mountain road narrowed ahead.
Cliff to the right.
A long drop to the left.
Stampede behind.
Death-tainted land blocking the way back.
And above them, one of Dragonfall Rift's apex predators spread its crimson-and-black wings across the sky.
Amon growled.
The Crimson Calamity Wyvern roared.
The sound rolled across the mountains.
The Mountain Chargers ran harder.
And the game continued.