Chapter [B5] 27 — The Final Battle

Chapter [B5] 27 — The Final Battle

I looked at the castle in front of me. I only had to will it once, through my connection, and the Tree of Life gently unmade the castle’s presence.

The bricks separated cleanly, as if a craftsman had reversed years of labor in a breath. Mortar lines unraveled into powder that drifted down in a pale curtain and then dissolved. The halls that had once held councils and banquets opened to bare air. Window frames lifted and tipped, carried by roots that threaded through them and set them aside on the trampled grass. Flagstones slid and stacked themselves in neat columns. The great doors eased from their hinges and lay flat, undamaged.

All to make it so that we could truly face the Demon God. So that the army we’d gathered would be effective. And what an army it was. Every cultivator, every person who could fight, all assembled around the palace. Everyone had come here voluntarily with only one purpose: to give this world a chance to survive.

The Tree of Life stretched upward, freed from the shackles of the castle. The trunk shone with faint threads of inscriptions and the lowest limbs rested on the ground like braces. The highest pierced cloud and anchored it in the heavens.

In the shadow of those branches, a cage of roots tightened around the pit where the Demon God stood bound, each strand humming with power stolen from the stripped walls and the ground beneath our feet. The last fragments of stone tumbled away and left only earth, roots, and that thing we had come to end.

The Demon God looked at me and tilted its head, assessing, slow and exact. Its eyes were depthless black, a gleam of presence that swallowed detail. It watched how the army arranged itself and how the tree’s weight shifted, cocked its head at command rhythms in the shouted orders, and all the while looked for gaps in its prison.

This wasn’t a dumb beast, nor a ravenous monster like normal demons. This was an ancient intelligence that knew exactly what it was doing, a creature of malevolent design rather than wanton destruction.

I looked toward my loved ones one by one: Zhang, floating a bit below me, staring with a resolute expression; my master, shoulders square and breath even, hands folded behind his back to hide the shaking in his fingers; Granny Lang with her patched cloak and a pouch full of pills she’d finished sealing not ten minutes ago, Su Lin and Cao Chen right next to her; Liuxiang with ink-stained gloves, plates stacked by rank in a case at her feet; Yan Yun with her spear butt resting on the ground, jaw clenched; even Elder Yan and Matriarch Shie had shown up, let alone Zhou Fang, who stood barefoot on a plate of metal so his domain could conduct cleanly.

Everyone was here, all ready to do this.

“You think your mortal weapons can defeat me, little cultivator? I am beyond any power you could possibly bring against me. Your best will only be a brief delay, and I will be all the stronger for it.” The monster licked its lips, leering at me through the glow of white and red light that surrounded it.

I wasn’t going to rise to its bait. Taking a deep breath, I looked at the tree and then back at the Demon God. “Do it, Twilight.”

Immediately the tree moved as if it had come to life, roots curling around the Demon God and lifting it, wrapping it tighter and tighter. The roots targeted joints that flexed, gaps where plates overlapped, channels where miasma pooled before it cycled outward. They pressed into soft places and then hardened, braided into clamps and then twisted to lock.

Each strand exchanged signals with the next. I felt those pulses pass through me. To my senses the Demon God became a diagram: nodes, lines, flows. Twilight cut off three major feedlines first, damped the backflow with absorbing cambium, then bored directly through a concentration chamber and flooded it with raw vitality.

That drew a reaction. The Demon God twisted and tried to shed the roots by shedding that entire layer of itself. It peeled, exhaled, and tried to leave the contaminated layer behind and grow a fresh one.

Twilight had expected it. The outer roots sloughed with the layer, while the inner ring tightened and then split into barbs that held.

The demon’s roar was more than sound, hitting like a shockwave. Those closest staggered and bled from the nose. Array plates flashed as they absorbed the excess and routed it into grounding rods hammered into the field’s corners.

Yan Yun spun her spear and planted the butt hard. The soldiers behind her steadied. A few let out a premature cheer, seeing the enemy trapped and immobilized.

I shook my head and waved for them to focus. That wouldn’t be enough to take it down. Not even close. The seal’s shards glowed inside the Demon God’s body, but I could already see the way it was dissolving them, detouring miasma around and then soaking in the remnants. Twilight was holding it in place for us, neutralizing some of its natural advantages, but every moment drained the tree far faster than anything it could have done on its own.

Yin pointed her arm at the Demon God, shouting a command, and discipline took over. Her people knew what to do. Cannons aimed and hurled bombs. Arrays flared, then their beams lanced into the Demon God in perfect coordination.

The first salvo struck three points and returned readings coded by color in the smoke trail. Bombs tumbled in staggered timing so their wakes didn’t trip each other. Some were simple white charges that burned miasma and left flesh undamaged. Others were pellets that split into nets in midair and wrapped before detonating, nets made of lines of inscriptions that bound and shrank. Where they struck, the Demon God’s surface puckered.

And through it all, that roar echoed louder and louder. Angry, wordless, something deeper than a scream but no less emotional.

On the flank closest to us, a swath of skin went dead black as the purification agents poured in. That section sloughed, fell, and hit the ground as a sheet of tar that immediately tried to crawl away. A squad of cultivators stepped in as one and burned it clean.

And then we learned it had been calling for reinforcements, not reacting to the pain. The tunnels we’d kept so painstakingly clear until now had been left with only a cursory guard as all our best troops were brought to this fight. A handful of cultivators should be able to handle any twenty demons in close confines, but without the Demon God consuming them, their numbers were a whole lot more than twenty.

The ground buckled and tore open right in front of our forward ranks and demons poured out from tunnels packed full to bursting, monsters crawling over one another to get out, shoving their kin upward as they converged on the rifts. ŗÁŊổ𝐁È𝐒

The first wave fell into a grid of pre-sited mines. They’d been meant for once the asura escaped the prison, to slow it down until I could meet its level, but this was as good a use for them as any.

The second wave unfolded wings and tried to glide.

“Currents!” Yin shouted. “Up twelve, fire in ranks.” Yin’s crews fired as instructed. A line of flares popped in sequence, warped the air, and collapsed the creatures’ lift.

The formerly-flying demons hit the ground amid bundled stakes that shot up and skewered them through their throat-vents. My friends handled the few interlopers that escaped, not to mention the army waiting eagerly.

The formation masters moved larger beasts with formations that shifted their sense of balance; they stumbled sideways into kill lanes and were cut down.

Liuxiang tossed a bottle that burst into a cloud; the creatures it touched slowed and then locked, trapped in binding powder that took on weight with every heartbeat. We pushed the lines back foot by foot. They were practically sacrifices.

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A second later, the bombs leached into the Demon God, burning it in a white fury, the absence of miasma. Where it took hold, the Demon God’s surface developed pits. Yin’s alchemists built the mix so it would crave miasma the way a dry sponge craves water and so it would go inert when it found none. The pitted areas would heal slowly without a large infusion of fresh miasma.

Twilight kept pressure on them to stop the Demon God from re-seeding those sections with its core. The Demon God kept screaming until it finally seemed to understand the dire situation it was in.

The air above the forward ranks warped and flared. Feathers formed out of heat, then blackened as threads of miasma veined them. The eyes that blinked open were rimmed with soot. The head turned once, taking in the tree, the roots, and the armies, then fixed on me. There was recognition in that gaze. There was also the rigidness of a mind locked in orders it did not choose.

The Demon God had chosen to unleash its first Divine Beast. The Vermillion Bird spat corrupted black flames, immediately injuring hundreds of soldiers.

Before it could continue, Zhang used his gravity Qi to bend the attack’s path. The flames folded and rolled across a pressure trough he shaped in the air, then spilled into a canal of packed earth that a formation team had prepared and sealed beneath a talisman lid. The heat rushed through the channel toward a sink well where an array drank it and stored it for later use.

Soldiers who had been in the flame’s path hit the ground and rolled as medics dragged them into the shade of shields.

Zhang didn’t stop to check. He shot forward, domain concentrated to a point at his shoulder. When he hit the Vermilion Bird’s breastbone the great body staggered and fell. He rode it down, knees bent, one hand clamped around the beak to keep it from biting.

Yan Yun and the others dived in; to assist them I sent a wave of my own Qi along with the Fourth Law, using my domain to suppress the Vermilion Bird.

I set the boundaries of the field and told it what counted as up and what counted as down, then narrowed down until the only motion allowed was the motion that helped us.

Every time its wings tried to spread to throw men clear, the air stiffened. Every time it tried to flare heat, the pressure gradient stole it and fed it into the siphons Yin had placed. It screeched at our attacks again and again. The sound carried the edge of the old Vermilion Bird’s voice, but the edge was smothered and trapped.

Yan, carrying purification pills in the form of quasi-bombs, threw them at the Vermilion Bird. She’d created mixed colors for different depths and different targets. Green pills sought blood vessels. Blue pills dissolved in lymph. White pills triggered only on miasma concentration above a marker.

I grabbed three white, two green, and a blue with my Qi, flattened them to coins in transit, and sent them through feather gaps. The Vermilion Bird’s body tried to move them back out with a rigid peristaltic wave.

I trained the coins to catch on connective tissue and hold until the trigger. Yan called a warning and tossed a bigger capsule with a red band. I caught that one with both hands and pushed it through a wound Zhang opened with the butt of his spear.

It thrashed—attacking, killing a few soldiers, burning a few more, even injuring Zhang—but before it could escape, the purification pills began to take effect. Its miasma started to vanish as it shrank, turning into a human. It had clearly chosen to turn back into a human the moment it regained a semblance of sanity.

The shrinking came in steps, first shedding the wings as feathers collapsed into hair that hung in clumps. The second step unhooked the sternum and plates split into ribs. The third step closed the beak. Bone flowed and calcified along a new plan. The screams changed. Words tried to form and broke in the throat.

Even in its human form, its veins were filled with miasma, but we could see it struggling to regain sanity. Yin threw some more purification pills at me and I descended to the ground, right towards the Vermillion Bird.

I landed with knees bent and one hand already reaching. The heat from its skin was uneven: hot at joints, cold at the hollows of the throat and under the shoulder blades where the miasma clung. I pressed the heel of my palm against the Vermillion Bird’s sternum and sent my Chi in a broad push, not a drill.

The miasma flowed backward like smoke pulled by a fan. It tried to spill out of other openings. I plugged those with small seals. I did not fight the body. I gave it a path and told it to use that path and no other. The seals flared one by one as blackness hit them. Yan Yun knelt beside me and placed three pills in sequence. The second broke, the third held. The skin under my hand cooled. The breath evened.

It looked on the verge of fainting, but before it did, it looked at me and tried to smile.

“T—Thank you, young one,” it groaned. “Please… save my brothers too.” Then it fainted. I caught its head and set it down on my folded cloak. A medic slid in and checked its pulse. Another set a cup against the Vermillion Bird’s lips and trickled a few drops in. I nodded once and stood.

The Demon God released another Divine Beast before we could even catch a breath: the White Tiger, Lord of Metal and Autumn, ruler of the West.

It came without light. The air cut. That was the only warning. The White Tiger hit the ground with all four paws at once. Claws extended. Where they landed, the ground parted into squares the size of a hand. Those squares leapt, stacked, and threw themselves like tiles. Three soldiers went down under that hail before we adjusted. The roar drove grit into the ears and rattled teeth.

I leapt at it, grabbing its claws. I felt them embed into my skin, but I would not stop.

The claws were unnatural, condensed edge rather than keratin, and kept their shape because of the law that bound them, not because of the material. When I caught them, I had to wrap Chi around my fingers in a sheath that matched that law. If I failed, the edge would cut through spirit as well as flesh. It still bit. It opened four lines across my palms and up my forearms. Blood ran hot and slick.

I tightened my grip. The white fur under my knuckles was wire-brush stiff. The tiger’s breath hit my face and stank of old coins and iron filings. I pulled. It pulled. I shifted weight forward and set my heels against the ground. The ground did not hold. The tiger’s domain told it that ground was water. It tried to drown my stance.

I said no and set my own domain under my feet. I could not give in, not if I wanted the soldiers behind me to live.

Zhang came in clutch, along with Granny Lang and my master, throwing purification pills, aiming for the joints. Elbows: two blue. Hips: one green, then a white. Jaws: none; too risky to waste. The pills stuck where our pressure on the limbs held tissues close together. The tiger shook once and tried to throw us off.

I rolled with it and ended up under the foreleg, shoulder to shoulder with a soldier whose eyes were wide and lips bloodless. I shoved him clear with my free knee and took the weight as the paw came down.

Yan hurled bombs as well—purification bombs but also the leaf based bombs we’d been using on the Demon God. The leaf-talisman bombs flensed, lines traced along the fur and then pulled, lifting plates cleanly. Blood followed, fine and bright. Inserting the purification bombs into its open flesh was a grotesque option, but it was the only option we had.

My friends had clearly sensed what I wanted to do, as Zhang immediately swerved a few purification bombs into the Divine Beasts’ wounds.

The beast screamed as it slammed its head sideways and cut a row of pikes off at half height. The men holding them flew. Zhou Fang stepped up and stamped. His plate under the ground rose to meet them and absorbed the shock before it lowered and set them on their feet again. He spat blood, wiped his mouth, and kept moving plates to keep soldiers from breaking their legs on hard falls.

The beast struggled, but I didn’t let it go on too long, climbing onto it and grasping its neck.

It tried to throw me. It rolled left and then right. I stuck. My knees dug into the skin at the base of the skull where the fur was thinnest. My right hand slid under the jaw and found the hollow where the law of metal still had to pass through flesh. I put my left forearm across that gap and pressed until I felt cartilage strain. The stink of metal filled my nose. My ears rang from the growl.

I circulated my Chi through it, finding the pills and driving the miasma out.

The collapse was sudden. The paws splayed, knees unlocked, spine bowed. This Divine Beast clearly did not have enough control over its state of mind even to try and turn human. I grit my teeth; if I had still been in front of the chest, it would have pushed my ribs in.

I pushed off and flipped to the side as the tiger’s chin struck the ground. The impact cracked the surface plates we’d been fighting on and left a shallow crater.

Yan Yun had already seen the path of the fall. She yanked two men away by the neck of their armor and had Leiyu shove a third so hard he rolled twice and came up swearing. She kept her eyes on the tail. It twitched and then went still.

I slid my palm across the beast’s neck and felt the miasma writhe. It tried to hide in the marrow of the lower jaw and the sockets of the teeth. I pressed the heel of my hand there and flooded those spaces while I sent a finer stream into the shoulders to keep the purge from pushing rot into those joints.

But though we were able to hold our own against the corrupted Divine Beast, the damn Demon God would not die.

It let out a world-ending roar as we continued bombarding it with the leaf bombs. “You think you have a chance? Foolish cultivator, this is not even the beginning.” It tore its arms free and raised them, darkness flashing red and purple streaked with blue and black.

This time it released two Divine Beasts at once.

The Azure Dragon and the Black Tortoise. Handling one at a time was already a pain… But both together…?

I couldn’t help but bite my lip.