Kai Jin and his team faded into the distance, leaving behind an eerie silence broken only by the distant, collective moan of the horde. For a moment, the four of them stood alone on the rocky outcropping, a tiny, isolated island of life in a world that felt overwhelmed by death.
"Well," Lily said, cracking her knuckles. "No more babysitters."
"It's on us now," Alex stated, his gaze fixed on the shimmering azure dome in the distance. He took a breath, the foul air a grim reminder of their task. "I'll take point. Jay, you're our center. Elara, Lily, stay on the flanks. Let's move cautiously."
Lily shot him a sideways glance, a smirk playing on her lips. "Well, look at you. The guy who thought a dantian was a type of soup is calling the shots. Don't get us all killed."
"I won't let that happen," Alex replied, unfazed by the jab. He looked up at a nearby, skeletal tree where Lumen was perched, preening his rainbow tail feather. "Lu, eyes up. Scout ahead."
With a sharp, joyous screech, the Void Falcon launched himself into the sky, a streak of midnight against the grey, overcast heavens. He climbed to a hundred meters and began to circle, a silent, watchful sentinel.
"Alright," Alex said, turning back to the group. "Let's move."
The others nodded, their expressions a mixture of grim determination and nervous energy. They fell into a tight formation and began to advance, picking their way through the rocky terrain toward the main battle. The ground was littered with the mangled corpses of beasts and the still forms of villagers, their milky eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.
They didn't have to wait long.
SKRAW!
Lumen's cry was sharp and piercing. Alex didn't need to look up. Through their bond, he felt a clear impression: Danger. Small group. From the left.
"Company," Alex announced calmly. "Left flank. Looks like a handful."
Just as he spoke, five shambling figures detached from the main horde and lurched towards them. Their limbs jerked in a parody of a walk, their low moans a dissonant chorus.
Lily didn't even break stride. "First one's mine," she declared.
Her whip remained coiled at her hip. With a flick of her wrist, an almost invisible crescent of pure, compressed wind, the Silent Gale Razor, sliced through the air with a soft whiss. The undead farmer at the front of the small group fell apart, its torso separating from its legs in a clean, bloodless bisection before the two halves tumbled into the dirt.
"Nice," Alex muttered, genuinely impressed.
The next undead, a woman with a vacant stare, lunged towards Elara. Elara was a current of azure robes. Her cutlass, now coated in a thin, shimmering layer of frost, danced forward. She didn't meet the lunge with force, but flowed past it, her blade tracing a single, elegant diagonal line across the creature's body. The cut was clean, and as the two halves of the corpse slid apart, twin arcs of crystalline ice instantly formed along the wounds, freezing the black corruption within.
Alex grinned, feeling a surge of pride in his friends' progress. "Alright, my turn."
He set his sights on the third shambling figure, an old man with a fisherman's net still tangled around his shoulders. Alex coiled his body, ready to test his own speed and power. But before he could even take a step, the ground in front of the undead man erupted.
SHLICK!
A single, thick spike of earth, its tip gleaming with a metallic, silvery sheen, shot up from the ground, impaling the undead man through the chest and lifting him a foot into the air. He hung there for a moment, a gruesome puppet on a string, before his form dissolved into a cloud of black dust.
The fight was over before it had even begun for Alex. He slowly turned, a look of playful, profound betrayal on his face, and looked at Jay.
"Unfair," Alex said, his voice full of mock hurt. "I had that one."
Jay leaned on his sabre with a confident, almost cocky grin. "Should have been faster."
"Are you two finished?" Lily snapped, her sharp voice cutting through their banter. The pragmatic commander was back in full force. "There are thousands more of them between here and the camp. This isn't a training exercise."
Alex and Jay exchanged a look, their brief moment of levity gone. She was right.
"Lily's right," Elara agreed, her gaze already scanning the path ahead. "We need to get to the main line. Quickly."
"Right," Alex said, his expression turning serious once more.
With a shared, unspoken agreement, they broke from their cautious walk into a dead sprint, four figures charging headlong into a tide of death, their goal the distant, besieged dome of azure light.
---------------------------
While Alex and his friends engaged their small pocket of stragglers, Kai Jin's team hit the main horde like a thunderclap. They were a singular weapon of destruction, and they tore through the battlefield with unrelenting force.
Talia was the tip of the spear. She didn't bother with elegant techniques. Her greatsword, wreathed in the dense, heavy Earth Qi, was a force of nature. With every swing, she didn't just cut; she pulverized. A downward cleave didn't just split an undead beast in two; it left a ten-foot-long crater in the earth, obliterating everything in its path in a shower of shattered bone and black ichor. She was a living wall of destruction, a one-woman demolition crew carving a path through the sea of rot.
"Keep up, lightning bug!" she roared, her voice a battle-cry that cut through the moans of the dead.
Ren just laughed, the sound a sharp crackle that echoed his own power. He was a phantom, a streak of pure, white lightning that danced in the gaps Talia's cataclysmic swings created. He didn't meet the horde head-on. He weaved through it. A flicker of motion, a flash of his reverse-grip daggers, and the heads of three shambling villagers would fly from their shoulders. He'd tap a charging, corrupted wolf with a lightning-infused finger, causing it to seize and spasm violently, its own corrupted energy short-circuiting before he zipped past to the next target. He was not a brawler; he was an executioner, his speed an unsolvable riddle for the shambling dead.
Kira, however, was a silent shadow of death gliding in their wake. She moved with a fluid grace, her initial approach one of subtle, deadly precision. A flick of her wrist sent a cloud of fine, purple powder drifting into a dense cluster of undead. She watched, her tattooed arms crossed, waiting for them to drop.
Nothing happened.
The corpses shambled through the poison cloud without even a twitch, their dead lungs not needing air, their rotted nerves immune to the potent neurotoxins that would have felled a Golden Core master in seconds.
A low hiss of pure frustration escaped Kira's lips. "Useless," she spat, her usual silken purr replaced by a cold, sharp anger. This enemy was an insult to her craft. Poisons were for the living. The dead required a more… direct approach.
With a motion so fluid it was almost invisible, she abandoned her alchemical powders. Twin, three-pronged sais, their points sharpened to a needle's tip, appeared in her hands as if from nowhere. She became a different kind of predator. She flowed into the horde, her movements a deadly dance. She didn't target heads or hearts. She targeted joints. A quick, twisting strike would sever the tendons in an undead bear's leg, sending it crashing to the ground. A precise jab to the base of a villager's skull would disconnect the spine, causing it to collapse into a twitching heap. She was a surgeon of death, dismantling the undead puppets with a cold, ruthless efficiency.
They were a symphony of destruction, their three distinct styles weaving together a tapestry of carnage. But the horde was endless. For every ten they cut down, twenty more would shamble forward to take their place, their milky eyes fixed on the shimmering azure dome in the distance.
It was then that a new threat emerged. A monstrous, corrupted bear, even larger than the ones Talia had been shattering, broke from the treeline. On its back, clinging to its matted, rotting fur, were a dozen of the smaller, child-sized undead, their limbs twitching with an unholy speed. It ignored the Golden Core disciples and charged for the weakest point in the defensive dome.
"That one's mine," Kai Jin's voice was a low rumble of command.
He didn't draw any weapon. He pulled his fist back and punched the empty air in the direction of the charging monstrosity.
But this was not the gentle, testing air cannon he had used against Alex. This was a storm. A massive, swirling vortex of wind Qi, visible to the naked eye, compressed in front of his fist into a cannonball of pure, destructive force.
The projectile shot across the battlefield with a deafening roar. It didn't just hit the bear; it cored it. The air cannon tore a hole the size of a cauldron straight through the beast's chest, the spiraling winds shredding bone and rotted flesh into a cloud of black dust. The dozen smaller undead riding on its back were disintegrated instantly, their forms unable to withstand the sheer, violent pressure.
The massive, now-hollowed-out bear stumbled for two more steps before collapsing, its momentum finally spent.
The Golden Core disciples didn't even pause to marvel at the display. They rushed in to use the opening their commander had created to press their attack, a relentless, unstoppable force against an infinite, unfeeling tide.
---------------------------
Inside the shimmering azure dome, the world was a haze of terror and desperate resolve. Craftsmen and formation apprentices, disciples whose hands were made for delicate inscription work and the precise shaping of spirit-steel, now stood with trembling hands, clutching hastily drawn talismans or simple utility daggers. They watched the horde press against their sanctuary, the wet, black smears left by the impacts a constant, gruesome reminder of how thin the line was between safety and oblivion. The barrier groaned under the ceaseless, mindless assault, the light shimmering violently with every coordinated slam from a corrupted beast.
Elder Wu stood at the center of the camp, his face a mask of cold, analytical fury. He was not watching the horde. He was watching his barrier. It was a masterpiece of defensive formations, but it was being powered by a fraction of the cultivators it was designed for. He could feel the strain, the way the righteous Qi buckled and warped under the sheer, unending pressure of the corrupting force outside. He was personally shunting a massive portion of his own Nascent Soul Qi into the array's core, a constant, draining effort to keep the barrier from shattering.
This was not a solution. It was a slow death.
"To me!" Wu's voice boomed, cutting through the panicked whispers. "Formation Masters, Cohort Alpha! Now!"
A dozen disciples, their faces pale but resolute, rushed to his side. They were the sect's best and brightest formation apprentices, but they were still just that–apprentices.
"The Radiant Sun Purification Array," Wu commanded, his voice leaving no room for fear. "Standard sequence, twelve-point anchor."
He swept his sleeve, and twenty-four flags shot from his storage ring. They were not the azure blue of his defensive ward, but a stark, bone-white, their surfaces bare of any embroidery. He drove them into the ground around him, forming a smaller, tighter circle within the larger dome.
"Begin!" he roared.
The twelve apprentices took their positions, one at each pair of flags. They pressed their palms to the white silk and began to pour their Qi into the array. Rivers of pale, shimmering light flowed from their hands, feeding the empty flags.
But Elder Wu was the conductor. His hands became a blur of intricate hand seals, each movement precise, ancient, and filled with a profound understanding of the world's underlying laws. He was not just channeling power; he was weaving it, shaping the raw Qi of his disciples into a weapon. His own, vastly more potent Qi flowed into the center, acting as the master key, the architect's blueprint that gave the entire structure its deadly purpose.
The bone-white flags began to pulse with a golden light. On the ground between them, an intricate diagram, a mandala of searing, righteous light, began to form, its lines burning themselves into the very ground.
"Push!" Wu commanded, sweat now beading on his own brow. He was holding back a tsunami with one hand while trying to unleash a volcano with the other.
The golden diagram on the ground flared, expanding with a silent, terrifying speed. It was a beautiful wave of death, a tsunami of pure, purifying energy. It reached the edge of the blue defensive barrier, and then, without pausing, it flowed through it, the two distinct formations passing through each other without interference.
The moment the golden light touched the first rank of the undead, they simply… ceased to exist.
There was no explosion, no scream. One moment, there was a shambling corpse, its green eyes burning with malice; the next, there was only a wisp of black vapor dissipating in the air. The wave of gold rolled outwards, a ring of absolute purification that spread for three hundred meters. Everything it touched undead villagers, corrupted beasts, even the foul, black sludge on the ground, was erased, leaving a perfect, hollow ring of blessed silence in the chaotic battlefield.
A massive, gaping hole had been torn in the horde's ranks, giving the vanguard teams precious breathing room.
Inside the barrier, the golden light faded. The twelve formation apprentices collapsed, their Qi completely drained. And in the center, Elder Wu swayed on his feet. The last of his Qi, the very power that held his iron will together, sputtered and died. The world went grey. The iron control he had maintained for a lifetime finally broke.
With a low groan, he crumpled to the ground, his heavy form hitting the stone with a dull, final thud.
Panic erupted. "Elder Wu!" a disciple screamed. They rushed forward, fumbling in their pouches for recovery pills. A senior apprentice knelt beside him, his face ashen with terror.
"The Grand Azure Ward…" he whispered to a terrified junior. "It takes fifty Golden Core disciples to power it stably. We only had twelve. He… he was making up the difference himself, while casting the Purification Array."
The full, horrifying weight of what their Elder had just done crashed down on them. He hadn't just fought a battle; he had willingly offered himself as a sacrifice to buy them a few more precious hours of life. Disciples frantically pushed high-grade pills into his mouth, their faces a mask of desperate, uncertain hope.