Chapter 98

  When the Heavens Weep (III)

  I was just about to begin admiring the badass gusto of that old man that seemingly came from nowhere when the sky started exploding. There's really no other way for it, I don't think; thunderous sounds, one after another, and blinding flashes of light interspersed with leviathan-like flames... it was hell.

  Or, well, it started raining hell.

  Again, not a metaphor--literal chunks of flesh began to rain from the sky, burning, all while the battles across the sect resumed. I watched countless pavilions begin to crumble, their walls webbing and shattering under the excruciating pressure of undulating Qi.

  "Come on, hurry!!" Elder Qin ushered us abruptly, and we followed.

  The old man had a nasty laceration across his left shoulder, flesh around it corroding at visible speeds.

  He stopped suddenly and stepped to the side, deflecting a string of attacks. His robes fluttered as Qi surged once again, his sword crying out as he swung. I couldn't quite make out what happened after--it was all too fast, to be honest. Flashes and blurs married in a strange, yet oddly beautiful, symphony of destruction.

  Fires came and through them cut the light, splitting them like the sea, before more heads began to roll and more limbs began to rain down.

  In the end, an old, haggard figure emerged from the bundle of destruction, far worse for wear than when he went in.

  Elder Qin was missing an entire limb--his left arm, to be precise, cut cleanly at just below the shoulder. He suddenly let go of the sword and pinned the pair of fingers rapidly across the surface of the shoulder, stopping the bleeding.

  Staggeringly, the sword he let go didn't fall--rather, it continued to hover in place, seemingly waiting for him.

  "Go, go!" It seemed that was the only sentiment he had left in him as he ushered us outwards.

  I glanced back over toward the sky, where I caught fading glimpses of human-like silhouettes flashing across the blinding haze. I wonder... will I ever be like them? Capable of something so... well, many things, really, but the first word that comes to my mind is 'terrifying'.

  We ran just down the mountain and cut it short by going left, avoiding the direct path and breaking through the scant few trees that remained. All the while, the ground continued to shake, and the screams of agony grew louder and more numerous.

  I stopped abruptly as I caught, from the corner of my eye, the sight of the Martial Hall erupting--a staggeringly wide pillar of flames jutted out at its heart, crashing through the walls and sending a shower of debris in a spherical direction. Velocity varied, but they all left hazy trails of fire, and, for a moment, it looked hauntingly beautiful, almost like fireworks.

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  Thus, I continued to run, my feet carrying me.

  We ducked and weaved between the flying debris the best we could, with Elder Qin stepping in frequently to shield us from the enemies. It all felt quite surreal, to be honest; the world was falling apart around me, but it was as though my brain didn't let me recognize that, from fear I would just go catatonic.

  I don't blame it, 'cause it's probably right, but it's also kind of frustrating to feel so damned numb to everything. Well, not to everything; screams still cut like a knife, and any time a flaming scrap would come whizzing by like a bullet, my heart would stop for a moment. Exhilarating, just not in the right way.

  We made it to the backend of my mountain, where I thought there wouldn't be any battles--but I was wrong. There were battles everywhere. It seems that there were far more spies among the Elders than just Elder Zhang, and they were all backstabbing the Spirit Sword cultivators the best they could.

  And thus, the corpses were piling up.

  It went beyond description in more ways than one, especially for me, a sheltered kid from the modern Earth. The closest I got to the pileupof corpses was that one summer our neighbor got a pair of goats, which seemed to spawn about eight billion flies that we used the spray on.

  Any time we'd leave the room sprayed and come back in half an hour, the red carpet would literally be black with uncountable flies.

  It's just a smidge different, though, now that it's people. Especially when a good number among them were kids. Like, not even kids to me--but literal children, age ten and under.

  "Where are you off to in such a hurry, Elder Lu?!!" A voice interrupted me as I came to a halt--a vaguely familiar face came from the haze of flames, staring daggers at me. I think it's one of the Elders I made a bet with, but I could barely remember more than a few of them, honestly. "You think you can run away after robbing me?! No, no, you must be punished! You must suffer!"

  The words barely left his lips before he was sandwiched by a pair of swords dissecting him into dozens of pieces while blood sprayed as though from a geyser. The two who saved me didn't so much as halt to offer a nod, as they themselves were quickly killed by a hurtling ball of flames.

  Elder Qin grabbed me and ushered the rest of us further out; there were still buildings here, old and decrepit, and I quickly realized this was where most of the servants lived. The flattened ground, though, was now host to an ever-growing river of red, with the surrounding trees all torched in a blaze.

  "That way," he pointed as we let the kids go in first, sneaking into the side of the cliff--where the array started. They seemed to morph into the stone as they vanished--rather eerie. "Why aren't you leaving?" Elder Qin asked, hurried.

  "Come with us," I said.

  "What?"

  "Leave with us. This place--"

  "--is my home," he interrupted, smiling. He was already pale and seemed to have aged a few decades since we left the mountain peak. Though he'd stopped the bleeding from his missing arm, on the way over he'd accrued a few more (dozen) wounds, and he couldn't stop them all from bleeding. "I cannot go. My Master is waiting for me."

  "..." I knew it was pointless, pushing any forward. That steely gaze... I don't know how I knew, but I did know that those were the eyes of a man who's prepared to die. "I'll find out why they did this, I promise." I offered the last bit that I could.

  "Just keep them safe," he said. "Nothing else matters."

  An aged, gentle arm pushed me back into the stone; as the view began to darken and fade, I saw his back stretch out across the horizon, tall and stalwart like a shield made to hold back the inferno from consuming the world. Old, missing an arm, wounded, tired... yet, it didn't matter.

  Even in death, he was larger than life.