The impact of the "Spear" hitting the Nightmare Cathedral should have been the end of the world. Li Yu descended like a meteor, his staff wreaking havoc on the structural integrity of the web-fortress. The bone pillars shattered, the silk ropes snapped with the sound of cracking whips and the roof collapsed inward in a cloud of dust and debris.

  "Charge!" Sect Master Zhou roared as he was leading the "Broom" forward to sweep up the chaos.

  The army surged into the ruins, weapons drawn and spiritual arts primed to slaughter the elite beast guard they expected to find within.

  Instead, they found... emptiness.

  Or, nearly emptiness.

  Li Yu stood in the center of the collapsed great hall as the dust settled. Around him lay the bodies of perhaps fifty beasts. But they weren't the Soul Formation commanders or even the Peak Core Formation elites they had expected to maybe find.

  They were runts. Weak beasts, injured beasts or beasts that looked too old to even fight. It was a non fighting force here. They had been stationed here to make noise. To hiss and screech and create the illusion of a bustling headquarters.

  "It’s empty," Patriarch Han said while he kicked a dead spider away. He looked around the vast and hollow structure. "Where are the elites? Where is the leader? The scouts swore they sensed powerful beasts and lots of them here."

  "Decoys," Sect Leader Yan realized as her face was paling. She pointed to piles of glowing spirit stones and the formations they were powering. "They used formations to create the illusions that their leaders were here. It’s a trick. A really high level one at that."

  Li Yu looked around and was scanning with his spiritual sense. "They knew we were coming. They sacrificed the trash to pin us down here. No, this was meant for the first team that arrived here. The ambushed they planned. Everything was a trap for the slaughter."

  "If the main force isn't here… Were they ever here?" Commander Lei started.

  "Their main force must have either been part of that ambush or they are somewhere else completely." Li Yu finished. His expression darkened a bit at the thought. It looks like this place will not be so simple.

  "Anyways, finish destroying this place," Li Yu ordered. "Burn it to the ground. I don't want a single thread left. We should at least take it out so it can’t be used the same way again."

  He turned to the two women standing beside him.

  "Si Luo, Bai Ruo. Scan the area. Check for hidden pocket dimensions or spatial folds. If the leaders are hiding here while their army attacks, I want to know. If you find nothing, destroy the environmental arrays causing this fog. Be careful though, at any signs of danger fall back."

  "Understood," Si Luo said, her eyes narrowing. "I will unravel their pathetic weave."

  "I will check the bedrock," Bai Ruo nodded. "Be careful, Commander."

  "Go," Li Yu said.

  He turned to give directions to his army. Since the forces weren’t here they wouldn’t spend too much time trying to find them. Their task was to secure this area.

  ROAAAAAR!

  It wasn't the screech of an arachnid. It was a deep metallic bellow that vibrated in the chest of every cultivator present. It sounded like tectonic plates grinding together in triumph.

  "Tekton," Li Yu said to himself and thought that the main force was there, attacking the injured camp.

  His figure blurred. One moment he was standing in the ruins of the cathedral; the next he was gone, leaving only an afterimage of displacement.

  "The Commander is gone!" a disciple shouted.

  "Hold position!" Sect Master Zhou ordered calmly. "The Sentry is still here. Go about your tasks but stay on guard. Do not worry about the commander. He knows what he is doing."

  Indeed, the blue-eyed Sentry avatar remained and was still standing guard over the army with a stoic expression.

  "Continue the demolition," Zhou commanded. "Trust the Commander. Trust the Dreadnought."

  Li Yu tore through the void. He burst into the clearing of the forest with his staff raised and was ready to unleash hell. As soon as it came into sight he stopped. He lowered his staff.

  "Well," Li Yu muttered. "That works too."

  The White-Bark Forest was no longer white. It was painted green.

  The clearing was a scene of absolute and one-sided devastation. The trees were splattered with ichor. The ground was carpeted with the mangled remains of hundreds of high-level arachnids and other beasts. These were the missing elites—the Scorpion-Kings, the Trapdoor Assassins and the Heavy-Webbers. They had launched a surprise attack on the camp. They were intending to massacre the wounded and break the human morale with another successful ambush.

  They had run into a wall. A wall made of thick plates and too many legs.

  Tekton sat in the middle of the carnage and was bobbing around in victory. He was currently using one of his massive scythe-like legs to pick a piece of scorpion shell out of his mandibles. When he saw Li Yu, he let out a happy screech and tapped the ground with a few of his legs.

  Behind him, huddled in a tight circle and protected by a hastily erected barrier were the medics and the wounded. They looked terrified but unharmed.

  Li Yu walked over to the head medic, a woman from the Violet Silk Pavilion whose hands were shaking.

  "Everything is okay now. What happened here?" Li Yu said gently.

  "C-Commander!" She spoke. "It was... it was sudden. They came from the ground. Hundreds of them. We thought we were dead. All the true fighters were not here."

  She pointed a trembling finger at the massive centipede.

  "But then... he moved. I've never seen anything move that fast. He didn't just fight them. He... he dismantled them. It was like he was offended they dared to touch his home. It was amazing."

  ‘Good job Tekton. You did really great.’ Li Yu said.

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  Tekton hissed smugly. ‘Those were just some tiny bugs. Crunchy. Too much shell, not enough meat. I need a real meal after this.’

  "Did anyone get further hurt in the fighting?" Li Yu asked the medic.

  "A few grazes from stray debris but no," she shook her head. "The beast... Lord Tekton I believed you said... he circled us. He used his body as a shield while he fought. Nothing got through."

  Li Yu nodded. He scanned the battlefield. The attack had been precise and vicious. If Tekton hadn't been here, everyone in this clearing would be dead. It showed that these beasts or the one commanding them was smart. This was the second ambush they that had set up and it nearly worked flawlessly.

  His eyes narrowed as he scanned the group once again. Something was missing. No, someone was missing.

  "Where is Elder Guo?" Li Yu asked.

  The medic hesitated. She pointed toward a dense patch of trees to the south, away from the main camp.

  "When the beasts breached the ground... Elder Guo shouted that the beast... Lord Tekton... couldn't hold them. He said staying near such a large target and with those that couldn’t fight was suicide. He gathered his disciples and they... they ran. That way."

  Li Yu looked in the direction she pointed. "They ran away from the one that was guarding them? Did that old man’s brain become damaged during the first ambush?"

  "They ran away from the fighting, to save themselves." she corrected quietly.

  Li Yu sighed. "Stay here. Let me go check to see where they are."

  He walked into the trees. He didn't have to walk far and his spiritual sense already told him what was waiting for him. Just a bit away he found them.

  It was a grisly scene. The Silver Sword Sect disciples hadn't made it far. They had run straight into the second wave of the ambush. The beasts were clearly ready for anyone running away. It was similar to the strategy that he was using. A spearhead and a clean up crew.

  Without Tekton’s protection and with their formation broken by panic, it had been a slaughter. Most of them had wounds on their back, showing that they were panicked or were running away. Saving themselves instead of fighting as a team.

  Li Yu stood over the body of Elder Guo. The Soul Formation expert lay on his back, his eyes wide with terror. His blackened arm was gone, ripped off entirely and his chest was a ruin of puncture wounds. His sword lay broken beside him. To Li Yu’s surprise most of his wounds were on his front, showing that he at least turned to face the enemy in death.

  "Idiot," Li Yu said softly. "You ran from the one thing that could save you because you abandoned your allies at the first signs of danger. While there is nothing wrong with running away. To leave everyone else to death while you do so is shameful. Even more shameful is to make the wrong choice."

  He didn't feel sadness. He didn't feel triumph or a sense of karmic retribution for these men and women. He just felt a cold pragmatic disappointment. It was a waste of cultivation, a waste of resources and a waste of life caused by sheer stupidity.

  Li Yu waved his hand. The storage rings from Elder Guo and the elite disciples flew off their fingers and into his palm.

  "As Kui always said, waste not, want not," Li Yu muttered.

  He tapped his foot on the ground. The earth churned, opening up a deep trench. With a wave of his hand a gust of wind swept the bodies into the grave. He slammed the earth shut, burying the Silver Sword Sect in the unmarked soil of the Silent Hollows.

  He turned away and headed back without much more thought.

  By the time the main army marched back from the cathedral ruins, the sun was beginning to pierce through the thinning fog.

  Sect Master Zhou and the others arrived at the clearing to find the scene as Li Yu did. The wounded were safe and sound and eating rations. Tekton was napping amidst a field of dead elites. And Li Yu was sitting on a stump, sorting through a pile of silver storage rings.

  "Commander?" Zhou approached as he was eyeing the carnage. "We heard the roar and you disappeared. We figured you had things handled since your sentry was still around us. What happened?"

  "The real fight was here," Li Yu said while tossing a ring into the air and catching it. "They used the cathedral as bait once again as we suspected once we were inside. Flanked us to hit the wounded."

  "The wounded?" Matriarch Su said worriedly. Fearing that some of the medical staff she left behind were caught up in it. She looked around at the medics. "Are they..."

  "They're fine," Li Yu said. "Tekton got hungry and they provided him with a nice meal."

  Commander Lei walked over to the corpse of a massive Scorpion-King that had been torn into three pieces.

  "Where are the Silver Sword disciples?" Patriarch Han asked while looking around. He didn't see the silver robes anywhere. They were the elite force from the previous army.

  Li Yu stopped tossing the ring. He looked at Han.

  "They decided to pursue an alternative tactical retreat," Li Yu said flatly. "They fled the safety of Tekton when the attack started. They ran into another force of beasts."

  "They're dead?" Sect Leader Yan asked.

  "Wiped out," Li Yu confirmed and pointed. "I buried them over there."

  The news settled over the group. There was no mourning from the Broken Army survivors though. The army that Li Yu had brought over didn’t care about those people either. Only a grim sense of karma settled in the air. The man who had sacrificed them to save himself had finally run out of people to hide behind. Done in by his own selfish choices.

  "Here," Li Yu tossed the handful of rings to Sect Master Zhou.

  "Commander?" Zhou caught them.

  "These belonged to the Silver Sword Sect," Li Yu said. "Guo was carrying a lot of resources. His disciples were also carrying some good things. Add it to the loot pool. Fifty-fifty split, as agreed. However, anything in there that could be identified as being from their sect. Give that to me first, as part of my share. I don’t want any of you to get into trouble for owning something that could easily be identified as being part of their sect."

  Zhou looked at the rings. It was a fortune. Elder Guo was the top elder of the sect and clearly had the wealth to show that. Li Yu was tossing it into the pot without blinking and was going to share it with everyone else.

  "Understood," Zhou said as he realized what this meant. Li Yu also reminded him to be careful with it and give Li Yu the hot items. Items that could mean disaster for any of them. "We will catalog it immediately."

  "Get the men to harvest these carcasses," Li Yu said, gesturing to the dead elites. "These are the high-quality ones. Don't let the blood spoil as they could be used or traded in."

  As the army spread out to begin the second harvest of the day, the air around Li Yu shimmered. Si Luo and Bai Ruo appeared next to him. They looked dusty but satisfied.

  "It is done," Si Luo announced while brushing a speck of dirt from her violet armor. "We found the environmental arrays anchoring the fog. They were hidden deep in the bedrock. Primitive designs but effective."

  "We shattered them," Bai Ruo added. "The fog should dissipate completely within the hour."

  "Did you find anything else?" Li Yu asked. "Any hidden tunnels? Any escaping beast leaders?"

  "None," Bai Ruo shook her head. "The spatial signature of this area is stabilizing. The beasts that attacked here... that was all of them. They committed everything to this ambush. Their mastermind is either not here or has already long left. It seems like someone or something smart was leading them."

  "It was a gamble," Li Yu mused. "They bet the house on wiping out our rear guard. They lost."

  "So," Si Luo stretched. "Are we finished here? This place is dreary."

  "We're finished," Li Yu nodded. "Good work today. Thank you for your help. Rest up."

  Si Luo sighed and transformed into a streak of violet light that shot onto the necklace. Bai Ruo bowed shyly and followed her.

  Li Yu stood up and looked at the clearing. The fog was lifting and revealing the stark white stone of the Silent Hollows under the clear afternoon sun. The "Broken Army" was no longer in their broken state. They were working side-by-side with his veterans, laughing, harvesting and celebrating survival. There was still a deep sense of loss for all their fallen friends but they were happy they had survived.

  Patriarch Han walked up to him and was holding a massive scorpion claw.

  "Commander," Han said. "Thank you for leading us to a victory today."

  "No problem at all. We are all on the same side. If this place is like the place we took over before coming here. We will need to stay until the array team arrives and finish their work." Li Yu said.

  Han stared at Li Yu’s back as he walked away. There were more words that he wanted to say but he held them back. Li Yu walked over to Tekton.

  "Let's wait for the Alliance team," Li Yu said while sitting on the centipede's head. "Then we get out of here. I still need to trade in those merit points. We probably earned quite a few right?"