Pre-Dawn. Alarm Bells. The Star bite Tilted. One of the three major wind crystals powering the Star bite howled unnaturally. Somewhere above the crow's nest, in the wind tree, the first shriek split the predawn gloom—a sound like a child's laugh, warped through razors and bone. Then came the bell—twice, then thrice, then frantically. The deck lights flared to red. Felicity and Faeluxe broke their stance mid-harmony, hair wind-swept and faces alert.
From the top deck, Gilly's voice cracked through the soul-wood "AERIALS! Incoming on all angles! Fliers—multiple wingspans!
The Star bite's under siege captain!"
I bursted from the chamber bare footed with only my lower zabons and obi on. lightning danced at my cerulean crystal armor. The spiral tyrant core, spirit shell exo shimmered azure over my whole body. I flicked out my ember coil tongue tasting the decay carried on the wind. My brow narrowed, "Undead." Ahead on the dark thunder clouds were incoming Zombie Bone-Drakes the main assault force of Red Cap's Aerial attack. Immediately I Identified them as a core threat. Rotting Z dragons, with auras of black qi. Their bones burn with decay fire, a sickly green flame that corrupted qi and melted formations on contact. Their breath Wasn't heat—it was pure decomposition.
They exhaled in sour moaning gusts, and anything they strike begins to disintegrate wood, metal, even enchantments. Their riders wear red cowls sewn from scalp-skin and chainmail. There were other creatures mixed in as well. Green-furred flying monkeys, I reached out with my spiritual senses and detected from their auras that they acted as harassers and saboteurs. Each was the size of a child, but with elongated limbs, blade-hands, and mouths full of hooked teeth.
They chittered and chattered and, dropping flammable bile or attaching explosive hex seals to the hull and sails. Some carry slings that hurled qi-draining goop. Others detonate when struck, splashing anti-light talismans. The last creature were flocks of Carrion Harpies, Assassins and Boarders. Hollow-eyed winged women, hair like coiled barbed wire. Their song was a mental interference field—it targeted a cultivators' intent. Each one targeted a different crewmember's qi weakness.
Their talons were coated in a slightly green venom glaze. The venom tipped talons could paralyze chakara channels causing them to constrict and slow qi flow. The sky began to fog green by necrotic mist from the bone-drakes. The Star bite's cloud-camo started failing, its elemental dragon Wisp shrieking in pain as the ambient pressure dropped. Cultivators stumbled. Glyphs dim. The enemy wasn't here to capture. They were here to burn.
The bell tolled. Red light shimmered across the hull of the Star bite. Above them, the pre-dawn sky boiled with green decay mist. The first thing on my to do list was to clear the air and dispel this toxic mist. Gulping in the last clean air pocket I could find, my chest swelled.
I let my qi spiral outward from my diaphragm, rotating along my ribcage like a thunder dance! "Tempest Breath" I thought as I prepared the next part of the attack. He exhaled sharply.
A tidal cyclone of compressed wind and vestigium qi exploded outward! Howling like a war horn the green fog screamed as it was peeled back in an expanding up burst, revealing the horrors around us. Flying Monkeys. Harpies. Bone dragons. The Star bite's elemental dragon spirit, Wisp, howled in relief as its senses cleared. Marla Arrived at my side Then came the gentle chime of her Black-blade armor, silk, and serpents. Medusa Marla stepped through space beside me, her Black-blade armor shimmering with cursed glyphs. Her black viper hair writhed, tongues flicking with hunger.
She raised both arms. Her voice was low and venomous: "Let them taste the sect of the Fang Paths wrath." Twelve black vipers split apart, each one opening its mouth to unleash seething green coils of animus, spiraling out in whip-like arcs. Wherever they struck, harpies shrieked and dissolved mid-flight, and monkeys were torn into green vapor. Meanwhile, Felicity and Faeluxe launched from the observation deck like twin blurs.
Their bodies shimmered in mirror stance, limbs trailing golden qi filaments. Their synchronized voices echoed with wind and blood:
"Tempest Harmony Stance: Blade storm blood tempest!" A cyclone of crimson petals and spiraling wind-blades burst from between them, shredding a wave of harpies into bones and feathers. The two cultivators spun in midair, catching and tossing each other between monkey swarms, using wind anchors to dash and reposition. Now that the atmosphere had cleared, I was able to take an even deeper inhale, pushing deeper—deeper than the breath wanted to go.
I used my lips to ram jet air into my already packed lungs, then waited-and released. A pulsing purple mini twister of viridian wind and qi formed in front of us, condensing faster than it should have! The green monkeys screeched—but too late! The twister sucked in hundreds of them, their bodies colliding in a screeching cyclone of claws and bile. Sensing an opportunity to take it to the next level I quickly Serpent dashed forward, Circulating the feather glyph from the cloud step manual, while also utilizing the flight essence force of my raptor feathers, I launched myself into a tier two martial attack!
"SPINNING EMBER WINDMILL KICK!"
I launched up right leg stiffly extended and forward, heel igniting with crackling purple qi flame, spinning into the twister the vortex exploded—a fireball pinwheel roaring out in all directions. Monkey carcasses rained across the hull, some still aflame, others dismembered mid-flight. And then... it landed. The deck cracked. The zombie dragon king smashed into the top deck, its wings collapsing with a gust of putrid wind. Its skull bore a rusted golden crown fused with bone. Green flame bled from its empty sockets. Carrion beetles crawled in and out of its ribcage. The Red-Cap sigil pulsed at its throat, carved into a glyph-seal that bled green ichor.
Its roar turned the wind sour. Its tail swept sideways, flattening a ballista and knocking two crewmen into the sky. I took one step forward, thunder crackling in my eyes.
"It's mine."
The zombie dragon king rose from the cracked deck, a reeking titan of rot and metal-bonded bone. Green death-fire spilled from its jaws as it hissed, wings twitching with half-living spasms. I exhaled slowly, purple qi condensing around me in rippling eddies. My muscles coiled. My eyes flicked over the dragon's frame—cracked sternum, torn flight webbing, overgrown qi glyphs pulsing like tumors across its spine.
Let's test the new arsenal...
"Serpent Step Mirage."
I shuttle footed forward—and vanished. A flicker, a shimmer, then six afterimages rippled in a winding, serpentine pattern around the dragon. Each after image twisted unnaturally, matching my rhythm and footfall exactly, creating a moving illusion that pulsed like a coiling qi serpent. The dragon lunged at the third image! Wrong one.
I struck.
"Thousand Lords Spirit Palm!"
My hand sliced the air—once. A moment passed. Then crack!—an invisible palm-strike detonated against the dragon's throat! Sending its rotted head jerking back. Another delayed shockwave bloomed across its left wing, then the chest. Bones cracked from within, no visible impact. The dragon reeled but it kept coming. My crystal-exo-armor shimmered then I inhaled and launched a volley of palm strikes!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! —a blur of direct palm strikes across the dragon's torso.
Each contact echoed with kinetic violence—and for every blow delivered, three more phantom strikes erupted afterward from the surrounding qi, delayed by a heartbeat.
Palm—slam-slam-slam!
Palm—slam-slam-slam!
Palm—slam-slam-slam!
Palm—slam-slam-slam!
Palm—slam-slam-slam!
Ribs cracked. Chunks of old armor flew off. But still… the dragon laughed. "Undead," I muttered. "Fire or life. Time to burn bright." I dropped into a meditative stance, reaching inward, deeper than usual. Past the lungs. Past the storm of tempest. I found it. The sunlit life core. Technically my life extension core gifted by my first ingestion of the sun god dew drop. Consuming two drops had added an additional fifty years added to my life span. It was a glowing golden orb nestled in my spiritual pond or dantian, gently pulsing gold and white like a seed of life lit from within.
It had once been a piece of the divine bloom from the sun god's bounty. It vibrated with life force—warm, nourishing, radiant. I drew from it. The heat wasn't searing. It was pure. It was alive. My palms lit gold. "Let's try this...
Thousand Palms of Life!" I surged forward, Golden qi spiraling into solar halos around each wrist.
Palm—flash! flash! flash! Palm-flash! flash! flash!
Palm—flash! flash! flash! Palm-flash! flash! flash!
Palm—light! light! light! Palm-flash! flash! flash!
Each strike left a glowing palm burning in the zombie dragon king, searing against the dragon's cursed flesh. The phantom palms behind each strike now shimmered gold and white! Infused with yang qi—and where they landed, rot evaporated, ichor ignited, bone withered. The dragon screamed. A real, guttural scream of agony.
Its wings snapped open in reflex, but it couldn't fly. Its spinal glyphs overloaded and cracked apart like shattered glass. I drove both palms into its chest. A final burst of golden crackling golden qi erupted outward in a flower pattern!
Blossoming from within the beast's ribcage. The Sunlit life core's holy resonance overwhelmed the death energy. The zombie dragon king exploded in a halo of radiant fire, torn apart from the inside. I landed on the deck, not breathing hard all thanks to the incredible tempest breath technique. Wind whipped past me, carrying away charred flesh and bone fragments. Behind me, the crew stared. Faeluxe and Felicity hovered near the railing. Marla's snakes hissed in grim approval. I stood, my hands glowing with fading gold light. "Holy palm fire."
The deck of the Star bite was scorched and pocked with ichor and burn marks. Harpy wings twitched where they'd fallen. Ash-covered monkeys drifted on the breeze like falling leaves. The last of the green fog had been dispersed by my tempest breath, and dawn's pale gold began to break the horizon.
Crew moved through the wreckage, limping, bloodied—but victorious. A chunk of smoldering flesh from the Zombie Dragon King sizzled near the starboard helm, as large as a wagon. Its blackened ribs pulsed faintly with residual qi. Marla glided across the deck with soundless grace, her feet leaving faint sigils where she stepped. The twelve black vipers on her head hissed in unison, nostrils flaring. She halted before the hunk of rotting flesh. Her eyes narrowed.
"…There," she whispered.
She raised both hands and called upon her cursed qi. Coils of green light unspooled from her fingertips, and with a shriek of resisting bone and flame, a core was drawn from the wreckage—round, fist-sized, and pulsing with a sickly green-black radiance. Faint necrotic runes flickered across its surface, locked in a slow rotation.
"Zombie Dragon Core – Tier one
A corrupted essence nucleus, saturated with Death qi and undying will. Requires cleansing or compatible cultivation path to absorb. Highly beneficial to necrotic paths or curse-bound evolutions" Marla finished. Marla's eyes flashed, the mirrored black of her pupils reflecting a thousand death-lit memories.
She cradled the core reverently—then turned and knelt before me. "Lord Ash," she said in her velvet tone, offering the core upward like a priceless relic. "This treasure belonged to you, its your kill. But may I request your blessing… to cultivate it under your banner?" She didn't flinch. Not even Faeluxe's subtle scowl or Felicity's narrowed glare could break her serene devotion.
I studied her, then nodded once.
"Granted.
May it bring you great strength."
Marla smiled—slow and sharp, "Then I shall bloom anew in your service, Lord Ash." She rose and stepped back into the swirling wind, she stored the zombie dragon crystal core in her spirit ring for bonding and cultivation at a later time. For she had not yet fully mastered the Hexa Hydra crystal yet, and mastering it first would make bonding with the dragon crystal core easier.
Faeluxe crossed her arms, squinting toward the horizon. "We'll need to rebuild the deck plates. But I suppose the Star bite has had worse." Felicity leaned against the railing, her crimson eyes on me. "So. Are we done playing with dead things, my love? Or shall we hunt down Red-Cap next?" I cracked my neck, wind curling around me in faint spirals. "Next stop," I said, voice low, "the beast vein continent."
And the sky opened before us, golden dawn spreading over storm-swept clouds—heralding the next leg of the journey.