Chương 100: The Battle for Crimson Lotus City

The armada filled the sky like a second horizon. Hundreds of warships stretched across the evening in staggered rows, their hulls painted crimson and gold. At the center, three Nascent Soul domains pulsed behind overlapping walls of spiritual pressure, shielding the main force and the command ships. The entire fleet advanced as one, slow and steady, formation arrays burning along their keels. Hundreds of vessels glided forward in eerie silence, crews standing rigid on their decks.

The promised fight inched closer with every second. Kevin's throat bobbed. His hands gripped the balcony railing hard enough to whiten his knuckles.

"That's a lot of boats."

"Don't be a wuss." Arthur didn't look up from the dagger he was inspecting. He held it to the light, inspecting the blood red veins.

"We faced a hundred and fifty Nascent Souls at the Chicago Catacombs. And besides, we can't even die here." Kevin's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue. Instead he turned to Leo.

"Was it that bad at Boston? Why in the world did you risk your actual life fighting those things?" Leo leaned against the railing and watched the fleet. The vanguard ships had begun to accelerate, their keels flaring bright as formation arrays pushed them faster. He could feel the spiritual pressure building even from here, a low vibration in his bones.

"I just went with the flow," Leo said.

"One thing led to another." That was the truth, technically. He'd gone to Zhang looking for information on how military cultivators attacked Mountain domain Nascent Soul Lords. Somehow Zhang had talked him into serving as a flyer for Boston command. In retrospect it was incredibly reckless, but at the time he'd just been focused on whatever was directly in front of him. One attempt at the Lava Chute, then the next, then the next. He hadn't realized how close to death he was until he woke up in the hospital.

"I guess that's one way to describe how we got into this mess." Kevin gestured at the ships.

"Hey." Arthur snapped his fingers.

"Make sure you activate your laundry talismans. I can tell it's about to get nasty." They all activated their talismans. The smell of smoke and dust vanished, replaced by clean air.

"There we go," Arthur said, inhaling deeply.

"When bodies start hitting the ground, you'll thank me." The vanguard crossed an invisible line. The last few hundred feet of open sky. Every ship lurched faster. Hulls groaned as overcharged arrays dumped their remaining reserves into raw speed. The measured advance became a desperate sprint, hundreds of vessels racing to cross into the airspace above the city before the defenders could respond. Crimson Lotus City lit up.

The battlements erupted in sequence, east wall to west wall, a rolling wave of coordinated fire that traveled the full perimeter in under two seconds. Sword cultivators stood shoulder to shoulder along the parapets, their arms sweeping forward in unison. Thousands of flying swords launched skyward, each blade wrapped in spiritual flame, trailing streamers of orange and white fire as they screamed toward the fleet. The first volley hit the vanguard broadside.

Flaming swords punched through hulls like needles through wet paper. A transport ship near the formation's left edge took fourteen blades through its port side. The impacts blew out chunks of spirit-reinforced timber the size of carts, scattering burning debris across the sky. The ship listed, fire racing up its masts, and began a slow roll to starboard. The second volley followed three seconds later. Then a third.

Then the volleys became a continuous stream, a river of burning metal pouring upward from the city walls into the belly of the fleet. Lord Ironhorn rose from the eastern gatehouse. His body gleamed silver in the firelight as he climbed above the city walls. The profundity did nothing to him. His domain unfurled around him like a mountain, thickening the air within its sphere, multiplying gravity, stretching time into something dense and slow.

Lord Ironhorn flew out beyond the walls, directly toward the three Nascent Soul domains. When the profundity caught them during their initial approach, all three had clustered in the center of the formation, their domains overlapping in a tight protective sphere around the fleet's command ships. A jade slip shot through the smoke and stopped in front of Leo's face, hovering at eye level. It was a message talisman from the Iron Rhinoceros Sect.

He plucked it from the air and channeled a thread of divine sense into its surface. Words etched themselves across the jade in flowing script: Lord Hollowfang - Greedy Wolf of the Seven Stars Lord Shattervow - Army Breaker of the Seven Stars Lord Coinsworth - Prosperity of the Seven Stars Three Nascent Soul Lords from the same system. This was clearly intentional, the western seat must have arranged this to take advantage of the synergy from Lords of the same system working together.

Leo passed the jade slip to Arthur, who scanned it and whistled low through his teeth. In front of the city, Lord Ironhorn swung the hollow of his Mountain domain like a whip, sweeping it across the field, tearing apart whatever entered his domain. Between sweeps he hurled condensed boulders of gravitational qi that detonated against the enemy. The enemy Lords could only attack forward, locked by the profundity, yet the concentrated pressure of three domains pushed Ironhorn back.

He gave ground slowly, each second he was pushed closer and closer back toward the city walls. The real slaughter happened everywhere else, where no Nascent Soul domain offered protection. Ships that had marched in tight formation minutes ago now tumbled through the sky in pieces. Burning hulls broke apart mid-air, spilling crews into open space. Masts snapped. Keels split. Formation arrays overloaded and detonated, adding their own explosions to the carnage.

The cultivators aboard fought to escape their burning vessels. A Gold Core elder leaped from a crumbling transport deck. The profundity forced him to charge straight forward into a flaming sword. Others tried the same. Dozens of cultivators abandoned their ships and charged forward through the firestorm. They ran through curtains of flame and shrapnel, through clouds of splinters and burning silk, their robes catching fire. They emerged with blackened skin and shattered spiritual defenses.

They escaped their ships into empty air and realized with horror that the profundity allowed no downward force. No flight. No slowing. From the balcony, the falling bodies were small enough to mistake for debris. Leo watched them drop, legs still churning against empty air, shrinking to specks before they hit the fields. Tiny puffs of dust marked where each one landed. He gripped the railing and reminded himself to breathe.

By the time the surviving ships reached the airspace directly above Crimson Lotus City, the vanguard had lost more than half its number. Burning wreckage scattered across the sky. Columns of black smoke rose from the debris fields. Fires burned on the ground where fallen ships had cratered into farmland and orchards. The ships that made it through were gutted. Hulls cracked open. Decks blown to splinters. Formation arrays flickering with the last of their reserves.

The moment they crossed into the city's airspace and the profundity released its grip, crews bailed. Cultivators threw themselves over railings and dove from shattered decks, desperate to reach solid ground. They found something worse. Defenders had prepared the rooftops below. Hundreds of formation-inscribed cannons sat in neat rows across the flat roofs of warehouses and merchant halls, their barrels angled skyward. The sky above Crimson Lotus City became a solid wall of fire.

Spiritual cannonballs detonated in overlapping bursts, each one a sphere of compressed flame and concussive force that expanded outward in rings of orange and white. The rings intersected, overlapped, reinforced each other. The air between the rooftops and the falling ships became a kill zone of layered explosions that ripped through the evacuating crews like wind through dry grass. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Bodies tumbled through the firestorm.

Robes burned away. Storage rings scattered like seeds from a shattered pod, glinting briefly in the firelight before disappearing into the smoke below. The initial invasion was catastrophic. Hundreds of boats had fallen. Tens of thousands of cultivators had died. The fields around Crimson Lotus City burned with scattered wreckage for a mile in every direction. Smoke choked the evening sky into darkness. Then Lord Shattervow of the Army Breaker Domain burned his blood. Leo felt it before he saw it.

A sudden, violent spike in spiritual pressure from the center of the fleet. The Lord's Army Breaker domain flared crimson, its boundaries expanding outward in a pulse that shoved the other Lords aside. Lord Shattervow's body hung at the center of his domain, arms spread wide, blood streaming from his eyes, his ears, his fingertips. The blood burned, converting to raw spiritual force that fed directly into the domain's expansion.

His skin split along the meridian lines, cracks of red light running down his arms and across his chest. The profundity fought him. For three seconds, the two forces ground against each other. The profundity's directional lock pressed against the Army Breaker's shattering attribute. Something had to give. The profundity cracked. A channel opened through the directional lock, a narrow corridor of freed space cutting from the fleet's center toward the city. Maybe fifty meters across. But enough.

Inside that corridor, the profundity's grip vanished entirely. Lord Shattervow plunged forward through the gap, and the main vanguard followed him in. Ships poured through the breach in single file, their hulls scraping the edges of the corridor, crews ducking beneath the profundity's pressure as it squeezed the channel from both sides. Once inside the city, they banked hard, spreading into attack formations, their cannons swiveling to find targets. Lord Ironhorn pulled back.

The Mountain domain contracted, drawing away from the clash and retreating deep into the city. Lord Shattervow and Lord Hollowfang of the Greedy Wolf domain chased after him. Lord Coinsworth stayed behind to stabilize the situation for the main armada. His domain, Prosperity, was well suited for this kind of large scale engagement. As long as he had spiritstones to spend, he could conjure golden characters that absorbed damage meant for his fleet. His armada fired back.

Formation cannons roared from the surviving ships. Bolts of compressed qi, each one thick as a tree trunk and bright as noon sun, arced downward toward the city. They struck rooftops and punched through tiled roofs. They hit the walls and blew sections of battlement into rubble. A warehouse near the southern market took a direct hit and collapsed inward, fire gutting the structure in seconds. The exchange intensified. The sword cultivators on the walls poured fire upward into his golden dome.

The fleet's cannons hammered downward into the city. Smoke and dust and spiritual fire filled the space between, a no man's land of intersecting energies where the air itself burned. Lord Coinsworth floated at the center of it all, serene. His golden runes caught every sword, deflected every volley, absorbed every attack. Thousands of spiritstones burned away each second, converted to golden light and spent in an instant. His expression showed quiet confidence, as if he had millions more to spare.

The tables had turned.

"That Prosperity domain is sitting up there alone." Arthur pointed at the remaining Nascent Soul, who hung in the sky surrounded by his constellation of golden runes.

"He's got to be loaded. All Prosperity cultivators are." Leo shook his head.

"We can't touch him."

"What do you mean? Look at him. Those golden runes are made of pure spiritstone energy. He's a walking treasury."

"A rich Prosperity cultivator would have endless spiritual qi saved up," Leo said.

"He can just buy his way out of any damage we deal. Our Tier Three power against a Nascent Soul with unlimited qi reserves. Think about it." Arthur's jaw worked.

"I saw the other two Lords pass their storage rings to him during the battle. Both of them. He's holding all of their wealth." Mike cleared his throat.

"They passed him their rings so he could use the spiritstones inside as fuel for his domain. He's the supply line. Every stone those rings hold is getting burned to keep the fleet alive." Mike nodded toward the golden constellation orbiting Coinsworth's position.

"By the time he's exhausted enough for us to attack, he'll be poor and penniless." Arthur's face twisted through several emotions.

"I bet you're crying inside," Arthur muttered, glaring at Lord Coinsworth.

"What a waste."

"Arthur, let's go." Mike was already at the stairwell, waving him down. Leo and Kevin had already left. The situation was getting dangerous, and the pagoda had already taken a few hits from errant spiritual cannon fire. Arthur took one last look at Lord Coinsworth's golden dome, shook his head in genuine disgust, and followed them downstairs.

The streets below the pagoda had become a maze of fire and rubble. Leo led the group through a collapsed archway, his divine sense sweeping ahead in short pulses. Arthur and Kevin flanked him, their Eclipses drawn, blades casting faint crimson light across the smoke-filled air. Cannon fire had cratered the main streets, forcing them into side alleys where bodies lay in crumpled heaps against shattered walls. Mike followed behind them, aiming his giant blunderbuss into the sky.

He still felt apprehensive about using his Eclipse. He had just finished spiritbonding with his new one after losing his first to Monarch Scatterstraw, and he didn't want to ask his wife for another. Above the city, the three Nascent Soul Lords tore the sky apart. Leo could feel everything without looking up. Each time the Army Breaker pulsed, the air pressure spiked hard enough to pop his ears. Each time the wolves lunged and the Mountain answered, the ground shuddered beneath his feet. Tiles slid from rooftops.

Cracks raced up walls. Kevin flinched at a particularly violent impact, his shoulders hunching toward his ears. A whimper escaped his throat before he could stop it.

"We could die any second!" Kevin's voice pitched high and raw.

"One stray hit from those things and we're paste! Why are we still here? Why aren't we logging out?" Mike clapped him on the shoulder.

"It's only a game, Kevin. Why do you have to be mad?"

"It doesn't feel like a game to me!" Lord Ironhorn fought brilliantly. The Mountain domain swept across the battlefield in grinding arcs, crushing anything that entered its range. Wolves that lunged too deep found themselves pinned by sudden spikes in gravity, their spectral forms flattening and dispersing. Shattervow's crimson pulses met walls of compressed gravity that stretched their impact across seconds, bleeding away their force. But two against one told eventually.

Every time Ironhorn committed to crushing an attack from Hollowfang, Shattervow's domain crept closer. Every time he turned to address Shattervow, the wolves multiplied, nipping at his flanks, draining vitality in small increments that added up. The Mountain's boundaries had contracted twice since Leo started watching. A flying boat screamed past overhead, close enough that its wake rattled the walls around them.

Six Gold Core cultivators rode its open deck, three manning formation cannons while three others prepared flying swords. Gray and black banners streamed from the mast. Ironhorn's elites. Leo spotted the heavyset man with the iron club among them. The one from the Jade Harmony Bank. The boat banked hard and dove toward Lord Hollowfang's position. Cannons fired in rapid succession, bolts of compressed qi streaking toward the Greedy Wolf domain. A handful of wolves broke from the pack and intercepted.

They ate the bolts whole. The wolves swelled, gorged on stolen energy, then fired it back toward the boat in a concentrated beam of silver light. The pilot threw the craft into a corkscrew. The beam tracked, curving hungry, and clipped the stern. Wood screamed. The rear quarter crumpled inward, speed formations sputtering. The craft began to spin. A second boat intercepted. Crimson and gold. Eight Western Seat Gold Cores unleashed flying swords that shot toward the Iron Rhinoceros vessel.

The heavyset man was thrown from the failing deck. His body blazed with qi as he tried to arrest his fall. A wolf caught him in midair. Leo watched the man's face contort, watched him swing his club in a desperate arc that passed through the wolf's immaterial skull. The wolf drained him in three seconds. His body aged fifty years between one heartbeat and the next. Only a loose pile of bones reached the streets. Leo knew that man. The iron club.

He'd fought Arthur on the main floor of the Jade Harmony Bank, back when they'd robbed the place. Now he was a pile of bones on a cobblestone road, and the wolves were already looking for their next meal. Lord Ironhorn kept falling back. His domain had contracted. Blood ran from his face. The two enemy Lords pressed him from both sides, wolves snapping, crimson pulses cracking reality. He looked like he was losing. But Leo traced the pattern of the retreat.

Each exchange angled southeast, toward the Spirit Bell Pavilion and the pagoda that somehow still stood intact above the surrounding destruction. Leo remembered what Ironhorn had told them. Stay somewhere around the pagoda. Don't get in the way. Ironhorn was drawing them along a deliberate path. Something was waiting for them at the Spirit Bell Pavilion. The three domains moved like a slow hurricane across the city, grinding closer. Buildings crumpled beneath them. Streets cratered. Fires spread in their wake.

Leo pushed his intent through the spiritual coordination nexus. M ove to the southeast, to the Spirit Bell Pavilion. Three acknowledgments pulsed back. They moved. A side street opened ahead. Leo's divine sense swept it and found movement. Four signatures, tightly grouped, moving fast. Foundation Establishment. Leo could feel the shape of their fear before he saw their faces. Leo pushed the information through his spiritual coordination nexus.

Arthur and Mike received their positions as well as distance, heading, and cultivation base. Kevin got a simplified ping: stay behind cover. By the time the four Western Seat soldiers rounded the corner twenty meters out, Leo's team was already attacking. Arthur's Eclipse shot out and slew two soldiers before they finished drawing. Mike's blunderbuss roared. The third soldier's torso vaporized in a spray of red mist, his arms and head tumbling in opposite directions.

The fourth managed to launch his sword toward Kevin's chest. Leo's Moonrider intercepted, knocked the attack aside, and punched through the soldier's sternum on the return arc. They kept moving. The domains drew closer, their pressure tangible even at street level. Another block. Another intersection. More soldiers, six this time, emerging from a burning warehouse with armfuls of stolen goods. The Eclipses sang. Bodies hit the cobblestones.

A spray of blood caught Leo's robes, and his laundry talisman dissolved it instantly. The Spirit Bell Pavilion loomed two hundred meters ahead. The three Nascent Soul domains had converged directly above it, their boundaries grinding together in a maelstrom of warped light. Lord Ironhorn's Mountain had contracted to a hundred meters. Blood streamed from his nose, his ears, his eyes. Leo's group ducked into a collapsed storefront. The walls shook with each pulse from the Army Breaker domain. Ceiling beams groaned.

Lord Ironhorn smiled. The rhinoceros horn on Lord Ironhorn's belt flashed white. Reality folded. The three domains, the three Nascent Soul Lords vanished. One moment they filled the sky above the pagoda. The next, empty air. Leo blinked. The sky above Crimson Lotus City held only smoke and drifting ash.