The demonic cultivator named Rust Reaper came over the horizon blasting through the sky upon a pillar of fire. He streaked forward, low to the ground at a height a duck might readily surpass. Constant pulses of scorching qi discharge powered this motion. Such burning bright motion rendered the path of the enemy extraordinarily obvious, one Liao could not possibly fail to notice and anticipate.

He was making a nearly straight line through the sky, one that would, if it continued, bring him almost directly above Qing Liao's hiding place.

This pattern offered Liao an excellent chance to examine the demonic cultivator, a visual investigation that painted details over what was otherwise little more than a blot of sickening crimson plague qi moving through the air.

Rust Reaper was tall, taller than any man Liao had ever seen before. He likely stood more than a full two meters in height. He wore armor from head to toe, a combination of pieces assembled in a style unfamiliar to Liao's eyes. No one in Mother's Gift utilized armor with a base formed out of circular steel scales laid in a coat over the chest. This was supported by layered metal splint armor on the arms and legs, an arrangement that made it appear as if the limbs were covered in coils. Gloves of mail coated the hands and feet, and a thickened layer of the same material hung down curtain-fashion from the front edge of a steel pot helmet. The rings covered the entirety of the neck, and all of the face save the eyes.

Though stylistically bizarre by the standards of Mother's Gift and even most old world imagery Liao knew, it certainly appeared formidably protective. He had rarely seen anyone garbed in such a substantial blanket of steel. The few bits of exposed skin that managed to peek out from beneath the heavy guard were orange-red in color, reminiscent of the rust for which the demonic cultivator was named. The man's corrosive dao did not, it seemed, have any impact on his equipment. Instead, everything was polished till it gleamed, making him almost painfully bright to look upon whenever the sun pierced through the clouds above.

Though propelled by flame, the demonic cultivator was clearly in desperate retreat. Whatever weapon he'd once wielded was lost, fallen somewhere in the forest behind. The sleek steel girding his right arm had been bent and pierced at numerous points. Blood, tinted a bizarre and lurid orange shade, leaked down to cover the whole limb up to the ends of badly broken fingers.

Artemay had struck hard, and more than once. Her foe no longer made any effort to fight. He could only flee in desperation.

"Air Flame Burst Charge," Sayaana's voice resonated through Liao's skull as she named the demonic cultivator's movement technique within moments of his appearance. "Well-known," she summarized rapidly. "Fast but can't turn for anything."

A moment's observation served to confirm this. Rust Reaper tore across the sky, a trail of fire following him, at a speed that would not have shamed a user of the Stellar Flash Steps. However, he moved in an almost perfectly straight line and seemed unable to deviate.

Liao raised his bow, sighting down that path in anticipation. He could never strike an aware immortal, but if the man followed such a perfectly direct vector, an arrow could arrive to meet him.

Even as he took aim, his mind raced and his eyes roved the sky, searching for Artemay. The grand elder must be present, and swift though Rust Reaper was, he was not able to outpace a user of the Stellar Flash Steps in the sixth layer of the celestial ascendancy realm. Running could not possibly allow him to escape.

Holding his eyes open, banishing any possibility of blinking, Liao stared at the oncoming enemy. It was impossible to look away. The horrid concentration of qi, a blot of rot upon the world, drew in all his attention. He could not miss the coming passage.

A burst of sound, a ringing detonation of metal against metal, marked out Artemay's return. The clash both erupted and ended in a singular instant. The grand elder appeared as if from nowhere, twin daggers burning with cold white fire, and drove both blades down towards the broad back of Rust Reaper. Qi slammed through the weapons, combining with already mighty muscle power to produce a strength that could have shattered boulders down to powder.

Rust Reaper was quick on defense and remarkably, unbelievably, solid. With his maimed right arm, he twisted and blocked the first striking point. White-hot blades sliced through qi-reinforced steel, but a flare of qi exploded as a talisman embedded beneath the plating triggered. The momentum of the blow terminated there. Metal plating crumbled to dust, but the orange skin beneath it stood untouched. An ever-increasing set of gaps with skin open to the air revealed a series of numerous blows that had steadily carved away at the armor, stripping protection off one strip at a time.

The second blindingly white point connected with the shield held in the demonic cultivator's left arm.

Liao had initially discounted that oval of metal. It resembled nothing so much as an oversized tortoise shell dipped and cast in bronze. Solid, but hardly worth taking the second hand off of a weapon. No fighting style in the Nine Sphere's Arsenal relied upon such protections, and few in others recorded in the library. He'd thought it a pointless affectation, something that would, just as the armor had, shatter at the first blow.

He was wrong. At the moment of contact, the unassuming shield revealed that it was far more than it seemed.

The impact of the dagger rang out, loud and clear. Metal on metal, striker to bell. Artemay's dagger struck that shield dead center only to clang back, all impetus canceled, without leaving so much as a scratch. The strike rebounded entirely. Liao watched, witnessing it with his qi sense, as the power of that blow spread across the shield to the edges and then, like a wave, rushed back to the center to rebound back at the attacker in full.

A ball, thrown against a wall, that was how Artemay encountered that shield. The grand elder flew backward, spinning through the sky, hurled away at full speed by this perfect reversal.

This did not harm her, of course, a tumble through the air would never injure a cultivator of such capability, but she was driven away a considerable distance, forced to rebuild the momentum of her Stellar Flash Steps in order to catch up. Reorienting, overtaking, and striking again took time, and in that time Rust Reaper ran onward on a beeline toward his fortress.

Delay and evade. Liao grasped this simple tactic immediately. Even the fortress, the giants, that was simply another scheme to buy time, to put more distance between them. The shield enabled this, it empowered the demonic cultivator to survive, to stretch out one strike at a time rather than be overwhelmed by the dagger rush in moments.

The wolf can only chase the deer a short way before the chase it lost. Liao knew this, had witnessed it upon the high slopes. He realized, watching as dagger rang against shield, that the same pattern played out above these skies. Artemay was facing a deadly clock, for if the cloaking layer of blood failed not even slaughtering Rust Reaper would be enough. He might even, somehow, have already signaled for help.

Time fought against them, all in Mother's Gift were imperiled so long as the demonic cultivator sheltered behind that shield.

Never had Liao heard of an artifact of such power, but the evidence before his eyes was perfectly clear. Worse, even after a pair of exchanges it was obvious the demonic cultivator was a master of defense and knew exactly how to position the bronze tortoise shell to maximum effect. Again and again, Artemay flashed in to strike and was bounced away in turn. At best she inflicted another cursory wound to the already ravaged right arm.

Remarkably enduring, Rust Reaper chose to sacrifice the flesh of that limb over and over, until all that remained was a ragged and torn mess of rust-soaked bone. He would sure lose the rest to rot even if he survived, but that was a small price to pay for his life, one that would not even be a permanent injury.

And as he moved ahead, it seemed the loss of one arm might be all it cost Rust Reaper to snatch survival away from Artemay's onslaught.

But Qing Liao stood unseen upon the path. The enemy charged before him, in perfect parallel for his shot. A final ringing echo broke through the sky, and the demonic cultivator entered into maximum range.

Fingers closed around a pointed, ling-headed bodkin-point arrow. Its iron had been refined and hardened in the smiths' furnaces until a perfectly sharpened and incredibly solid point was obtained. The heavy arrow fitted to his warbow, pulled back along the edge of the dark stone thumb ring. Raising the weapon, Liao sighted along the path. He judged the changing distance even as he pushed qi through his arms, back, and hips.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The bow extended to max draw. Coils of qi wrapped around the arrow shaft as a nest of constricting serpents. Power pushed down the arrow itself, investing the grain and fletching with as much qi as wood and feathers could contain. The strongest strike his cultivation could summon.

The path before the arrow was clear, naught but empty sky. Liao saw the way in his mind, the point of impact as the arrow raced upward. His thumb pulled sideways.

"No!" Sayaana's voice rocketed through his skull at the final moment. "Do not aim at him! You can't hurt him! Aim in front, make him stop!"

Images cascaded through his mind, matched to this revelation from one trusted absolutely. A tiny jerk of his bow, just enough to adjust the trajectory, and the single most potent strike his body could endure.

Nine Spheres Arsenal Bow Art Second Form: Flare Star.

The arrow caught fire the moment it left the bowstring. It carved a path of blinding light through the sky, crackling and booming as it accelerated past the speed of sound. The wood and fletching disintegrated, sacrificed to form a rocket of qi that further increased the momentum impelling the arrowhead. The hardened iron barb glowed white-hot, and its edges melted and sharpened against the wind.

This burning bodkin passed in front of Rust Reaper, a fraction of a second before his path would have driven him into it.

Then it exploded.

Burning light covered the sky. Air ignited, a fireball striking upwards, whirling and spiraling in a moment of superheated detonation that blinded everything in a blast of supreme brightness and blazing heat.

Leaves on trees hundreds of meters below dried and blackened. Small birds fell from the sky, stunned and disoriented.

The blast of stellar wrath washed over Rust Reaper. Defensive talismans glowed briefly as they deflected the swirling energy up and away. Orange blood, dripping down his left arm, boiled off. Rusty orange-red skin in mottled pattern was revealed beneath. Sickly in countenance and brittle but still iron strong.

Red eyes, searing with demonic rage, blinked once. The flames streaking forth from beneath his boots ceased for a single heartbeat. All acceleration paused, halted, and the wind of the rushing blast tore away huge hunks of his momentum.

Artemay appeared, as if materialized from the black beyond the sky, at his back. Her blue arms wrapped around the steel-clad red limbs of the demonic cultivator, grasping with the ferocious attachment of a limpet. Daggers, hard in her hands, plunged down into the mail coating the red skin of the neck. Again and again, steel blades pierced through steel rings.

Orange blood spurted out from beneath that mail covering as the demonic cultivator thrashed madly. He writhed and churned, spinning in midair as he tried to slam the bronze tortoise shield into the blood-covered face of his attacker, but the female immortal's smaller frame allowed her to slither around the body of her prey and slip beyond the reach of any counterstrike.

It took twenty-eight blows. Liao counted each one, all unleashed in under four seconds. Only then did the thrashing stop.

Artemay let go. A corpse plummeted downward, crumbling to dust in the sky. Nothing managed to return to the earth before the plague consumed it all.

A concentrated ball of qi, full of iron tang and rot, escaped from that ruined body to run directly eastward. Liao felt it, this condensation of demonic energy with the distinctive flavor of rust on the tongue. He could not see it, but the potency of the qi remained, raw and unguarded, the unconcealed status of a soul ripped free from flesh.

The paired daggers in Artemay's hand rose up to her shoulders, then whipped forward as one. A move Liao knew, though one he could not perform. Nine Spheres Arsenal Dagger Arts Third Form: Orbital Cross. Twin projections of razor-sharp qi raced out in a form of crossed arcs from the edge of the weapons. They intersected atop the remnant soul's fleeing existence.

The sky split open, blasted to lightning blue white. The ground shook. Liao was forced to look down toward the ground, and he stumbled slightly as a rain of broken branches fell from the canopy and spattered across his back. The shockwave passed far to the east, inflicting a three-kilometer blowdown across the forest in its path.

Rust Reaper's qi vanished. An immortal demonic cultivator, a man who had lived for over twenty-nine centuries, was now gone. Forever, or so it was said. The souls of those who sided with the plague were consumed by it, lost forever beyond the cycle of reincarnation and rebirth.

Not even the mercy of the gods could save those who had betrayed all life.

Gathering strength and redistributing qi to replace that depleted by the use of the most potent technique he could wield, Liao got to his feet slowly. There was just enough time for him to stand up before Artemay landed beside him. The grand elder appeared rather scuffed, with her sharkskin outfit torn and ripped at many points, but she was otherwise unharmed. Her face remained concealed, coated in rapidly drying blood.

The deadly daggers had returned to their sheaths, and her hands held instead the large bronze tortoiseshell shield the demonic cultivator had dropped in his final moments of struggle.

She flipped the shield in her arms, placing the face side toward the ground, and made of the interior a scooped container reminiscent of a giant frying pot. "Get on," she instructed. "I'll use this to carry you. We've minutes only left before this cloak made of your blood fails."

Knowing there was no time for questions, Liao complied. He was forced to lay down upon the shield, for the pace set by the immortal would have peeled the skin from his face had he tried to stare into the oncoming wind. An embarrassing posture, but there were no witnesses who mattered.

Though they had traveled many kilometers at high speeds while searching, the grand elder moved significantly faster now. It took mere minutes to return to the gateway.

Liao did not look up until after he felt the subtle shift of qi indicating they had left the Ruined Wastes behind and returned to Mother's Gift. He rolled off the shield and onto his back on the rough soil of the Killing Fields, staring up at the sky. The gateway shimmered before him, with Artemay standing to the side.

The grand elder ignored him for the moment. She had pulled a pill the size of an orange from her pouch and cracked it over her head. Water, absolutely pure, poured out of that gourd. It cleansed the blood from her face completely. Filtered through the command of qi through the inside of the sharkskin suit, it pushed out Liao's blood until it was nothing but a reddish puddle at her feet.

"Effective, but disgusting," she shook her whole body, like a dog that had just stepped free of a river.

Only as Liao managed to find his footing again did the pupil-less eyes turn toward him. "Well done." This simple declaration, a mere two words without emphasis, triggered an immense burst of warmth throughout Liao's body. The regard of a grand elder, however tersely expressed, represented something almost indescribably immense.

"If you had not acted, it could have gone very badly," Artemay continued. She hefted the bronze shield then, holding the heavy metal item easily in one hand. "This was an unexpected surprise." Tapping one long nail against the surface, she scowled as it rang out with perfect resonant clarity. "A testament to the power of small variables to disrupt any plan, even those of immortals."

Granted stillness and a moment to reflect, Liao was able to properly examine the shield for the first time. It was, even to one such as he with limited appreciation for metallurgy, a remarkable item. A single piece of bronze formed it, clear cast in a mold so perfect it had needed no further adjustment once cooled. Perfect always, from the very beginning. It could be neither damaged nor modified.

The purity of that bronze, golden, reflective, and describing every detail of the complex shell patterns of a giant tortoise, it was an absolute creation. Feeling its nature, on a level below sight or touch, he realized that the qi embedded in the shield represented a reservoir capable of matching Artemay herself. An artifact more powerful than anything he'd ever seen. Even the weapons and armor wielded by the Twelve Sisters, items made by immortal hands all, could not come close to this perfection.

Sensing that truth, all doubts as to how it had been able to so thoroughly negate Artemay's attacks vanished.

"What is it?" Liao asked in a whisper. He wanted to reach out and touch the shield, just to feel the embedded artistry for true. Such daring lay beyond him. He knew, instinctively, that he was not worthy of such creation. Not now, and not for many centuries to come.

"The Turtle's Echo." Even Artemay's voice betrayed a measure of awe, something that only made the shield appear all the more impressive. "A creation of the Second Sage. One of the Three Great Shields. And the other two, its only possible rivals, were destroyed during the Demon War. All force directed against it is reflected." Her expression returned to a deep, measured scowl. "It is not something Rust Reaper should have possessed. He lacked the strength to prevent a stronger rival from ripping it out of his hands. Bloody Roam must have given it to him."

Her eyes drifted upwards, staring deep into the sky. The terrible name, one spoken of only in whispered legend, lingered behind her words. Liao resisted the urge to shiver.

After a moment, the grand elder turned back to him. "But that is no concern of yours, not for now. You did well," she noted, still deeply serious. Blue eyes focused on him, and she switched her gaze over to the shimmering gateway beside them, then back again. "You want what lies beyond this."

It was not a question. Liao knew that desire was in him, deep. He suspected the grand elder could read it from across every one of his pores. The brief taste she'd granted him, not even an hour spent tearing through the sky, had been enough to stoke the spark of desire into a raging flame. Sayaana's stories had already pushed him in that direction. Time in the wilderness had done the same.

He was a cultivator of the wild, and the Ruined Wastes were the true wilds of the world. Even a brief glimpse, the mere feel of the land beyond the gate, had sufficed to reveal that. Liao intended, needed, to walk those lands. From one end of the earth to the other. That the grand elder noticed this came as no surprise at all.

"Anyone who can keep their head and face down an immortal is worthy of such things," this unexpected of support spun Liao's head around. "I will support this request. Itinay will adjust her plans to accommodate me, probably." She smiled; blue lips twisted wickedly. "But that is not enough. To gain a majority you will need Neay's support. I will give you a letter to present to her, but you must choose your moment carefully. You are not yet able to convince an immortal through debate. Circumstance will have to be your ally."

Those words spoken, Artemay lifted the shield over her shoulder to carry it with shocking casualness. "Go home. Enjoy this victory. A great danger has been delayed. The rest, it can wait on another day."

Without further word, she dashed across the Killing Fields at extraordinary speed. Liao was left staring at her retreating form under the looming arc of the Starwall. He wondered at the nature of this victory. The slow walk back to the sect offered him the chance to put together pieces in order but provided no real clarity.

A final look, back toward the gateway before he surmounted the wall, cemented a different conclusion in place. His truth, his dao, was not found in Mother's Gift. It lay beyond the gate.

Everything else was simply a matter of getting there.

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