The sky ladders had moved forward, but this time, they held back just outside the range of the trebuchets, just outside retaliation, as if the general taunted the defenders. Daring them to sally forth and destroy the ladders. Instead, the trebuchets fired, wearing away at the walls.
For long hours, the army stood, baking in the heat of the midday sun. Others ran back and forth, offering liquid refreshment and later on, chewed hardtack for meals. The soldiers in the army began to rotate, each wave moving forward to take the vanguard position.
During the fourth hour after noon, as the sun slowly banked toward the horizon, the battle changed. Already, the soldiers who had been attacking had wearied, many having pulled back under cover of the assault covers as replacements arrived. As the assault covers returned with the latest wave of weary soldiers, the cultivators came.
The Six Jade Gates Sect members dropped from the walls, some kicking off in midair, others using ropes to help break their fall, while a small number—like Wu Ying the day before—just dropped and absorbed the fall. They rushed forward, launching chi-filled attacks at nearby assault covers, flames and earth erupting and tearing apart the siege weapons. A rotating whirlwind of metal and air flashed over to a cover vehicle and wood shrieked as it was torn apart, exposing the soldiers within to the metallic storm.
Their attacks destroyed some of the covers, wrecked roofs and shattered wheels. Other attacks were more obtuse, still green wood warping and growing, twisting as they drew upon the remaining nutrients in their forms and the chi infused in the attacks to trap and tear apart their occupants.
Those with less destructive elements and styles assaulted the remaining soldiers directly. They rushed toward fixed defenses, jumped into foxholes, and killed without remorse.
Horns blew, drumbeats changed, and flags rose and fell, signaling their own army’s response. Cultivators from the State of Shen threw themselves from behind their lines to meet their enemies in combat. They charged across the open ground, riding horses or dashing across no-man’s-land with barely a tap of their feet. Even so, hidden enemy archers who had been waiting rose from the walls, leveling bows and crossbows at the charging cultivators. They fired, some of those attacks bursting into flame, others gleaming and wrapped in other elemental chi methods.
Wu Ying’s breath caught as he noticed a pair of familiar figures riding alongside other cultivators from the State of Shen. Chao Kun ignored the arrows for the most part, only acting to catch one as it moved to strike his face before tossing it aside with a casual motion, impervious to the chi imbued into the attack. On the other hand, Liu Tsong took a more active role in her defense, using a trio of apothecarist’s cauldrons, each smaller than the one she had showcased yesterday, and wielding the cauldrons with her chi to block attacks. The cauldrons had a strange gravitational effect, where arrows that seemed to be about to miss them would swerve, attracted to strike the cauldrons. As he watched, Wu Ying noted how Liu Tsong had taken much of her recent fighting techniques from her master. Still, as they neared the first of the cultivators, Liu Tsong drew her staff from her storage ring and swung it, warding off a few of the more dangerous attacks.
An elbow to his side made Wu Ying turn to look at Li Yao, who gestured at the walls. There, a familiar armored figure stood, staring down at the cultivators who fought. Wu Ying frowned, curious to see if the man would jump down, but the armored cultivator just watched. All around the front of the city wall, the cultivators from different sects battled, clashing in explosions of elemental chi. Water and fire turned to steam that was blown aside or collected into ice by another cultivator and thrust at an enemy. Earth rose from the ground, formed into a grasping fist that clutched at a cultivator, only to be shattered apart by a kick. And these were all the low-level, almost mundane attacks.
More exotic attacks were showcased occasionally. Chao Kun’s Star-Spangled Fist, now having reached Greater Achievement, made the light around him congregate into pinpoints of energy, his fist moving so fast that the defending cultivators couldn’t block them. Each strike shattered armor, weapons, and bodies, the energy within the attacks blasting through the defensive auras conjured to protect the others.
On the other side of the battlefield, a roaring turtle head formed, its body made of chi, its legs drawn into its shell. A gesture and it went spinning, head withdrawn as it bowled over the Verdant Green Waters Sect fighters who opposed the powerful Energy Stage cultivator. Spotting the difficulty his sect members were having, Chao Kun turned and ran forward, only to be stopped by an ominous door. As it opened, tentacles sprouted from the door, attacking Chao Kun.
A flash of light tore Wu Ying’s gaze to the side, where formations appeared, locking down a half dozen cultivators on both sides, pressing them into the earth without care of side. The weakest of that group screamed, his bones shattering under the pressure.
All around, chaos reigned and bodies fell. Wandering cultivators, Verdant Green Waters Sect, and Jade Gates Sect members fought, while smaller sects clashed against one another on the edges.
“We need to help them,” said Wu Ying to Li Yao.
“Don’t be an idiot!” said Yin Xue. “We have our orders. We stay until we are ordered to do otherwise.”
Wu Ying shifted angrily, but Li Yao placed a hand on his arm. “He’s right. I know you don’t want to hear this, but that’s what they teach us as martial specialists. We follow orders, because otherwise plans will be disrupted. I want to go too, but we cannot.”
Wu Ying’s lip twitched, but motion to his side made him spot Tou Hei moving unopposed through the ranks. The soldiers glanced at the ex-monk, some calling for him to stop or questioning his actions, but none tried to stop him.
“Tou Hei!” Li Yao shouted.
“I’ll get him,” Wu Ying said. He pushed ahead, brushing off Li Yao’s hand as she tried to hold him back. He was not going to let his friend go out alone.
Wu Ying caught up with his friend at the edge of the first wave, grouping up near a sky ladder that waited for orders. Beside them, an assault cover made its way back, a pair of soldiers holding up the axle of one set of wheels and trotting alongside the cover to bring it back. Wu Ying laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder as he looked to enter the fray. Ahead of them, the chaos of clashing cultivators continued.
“Are you here to stop me?” Tou Hei looked unhappily at his friend.
“Stop you. Join you. All the same thing,” Wu Ying said. “But you do know that they’re not going to be happy with us.”
“People are dying.”
Having said his piece, Tou Hei took off, his staff appearing in his hands. He angled himself toward the nearest group while keeping a close eye for arrows that might attack him.
Wu Ying chased his friend, drawing his own weapon. “You could have at least warned me before running off.”
They made it about three quarters of the way to the nearest group before the enemy archers spotted them. At first, only a few arrows, unenchanted and unskilled, targeted the pair. But soon enough, the cultivators who had chosen the bow as their weapon of choice fired on the pair. After all, these two were not engaged with their friends in combat. There was little chance of them hurting a friendly face.
A single arrow exploded into flames, creating multiple fire sparrows that flew in an arc toward the pair. Tou Hei stopped for a moment, his staff spinning, enacting the Sixth form of the Mountain Resides style. The chi of the world responded to his cultivation, the earth itself forming into an image of the cliff face that he’d conjured from within. The fire sparrows struck, flared, and died upon this unyielding wall of chi.