Chương 4: Chapter 3

As his world crumbled around him, Wu Nenqin vowed to fight to the last. His life was a pittance compared to the debt he left, but it was all he could give. A disappointing gesture, yet part of him still felt a bitter satisfaction: at least his end would be as pitiful as his existence had been. He only hoped his ancestors' disdain in receiving him would be softened by it.

As the Deputy Master of the Godless Night, it was his honor and duty to guide generations of cultivators in the study of the Thirty-Two Umbral Paths and to shepherd them to the proper worship of the Night. He had been raised for the role, like his father and his father's father before him.

Taught the greatness of the legacy he was to be entrusted with, brought up on the finest training the Owl Talon Den could offer, on the best resources gathered by the Scavenger Moon Guild and the greatest weapons crafted by the Blackflame Forge. A life of favor, gifted so that one day he may repay it with filial duty. It had been his most ardent wish.

"Deputy Master!" Warned Haoran. Wu Nenqin spun, sparks flying as the claws aimed at his throat clashed with his sword instead. In a flash, he saw a demonic cultivator's face, twisted by rage and whatever foul energy he had imbibed to fuel his reckless advance. As foolish as it was pointless; it disappeared a moment later as Haoran crushed him with a double-handed blow.

"Young Master! Are you alright?" Haoran asked, landing beside him. Swathed in his Eight-Angles Armor, the old man was a nightmare. With his ten feet of height, the blades of darkness writhing and crossing across his skin and the darkened weight of his Qi, he was a creature of the Abyss rather than a man. It made the sheer concern on his face almost comical and Wu Nenqin felt a pang of nostalgia at the slip in formality. Brave, faithful Haoran. The first of his Direct Disciples and an Elder in all but name.

If he had never taken the title, it was out of duty and a desire to keep serving the "Young Master" directly. Such a way to repay his loyalty. His top-knot had come undone, the elegant pearl-studded clasp dangling awkwardly. A quick cut from his sword sent it fluttering in the ash-strewn air. Wu Nenqin's raven hair, one of the signs of his heritage, fluttered freely.

"Where next?" He asked in lieu of an answer, panting. He was matted in sweat and blood. His Core strained like a horse against its bindings and his Meridians were raw with effort. Demonic Qi burned through his shoulder like acid trapped in wood and a few of his ribs were broken, the fragments held in place only by his inner control. It didn't matter. His well-being didn't matter, not if the Sect perished. Haoran looked pained, concern flashing in his eyes. But he knew his charge too well to argue.

"The Second Bastion! The scum is overrunning it!" Wu Nenqin looked where his adjutant pointed and immediately regretted it. The courtyard was strewn with corpses, the dusky grey and black of the Godless Night mingling with the nonsensical anatomy of the invaders. Unnatural fires wounded the Night with their shades of crimson and blood and the clash of combat and tragedy violated its blessed quiet. Yet, what broke his heart was the state of the Ring.

The great walls that had towered over the Wu Plateau and protected the Yan Luo Craters for tens of thousands of years were in tatters. The Night Gate, which mighty hinges had held the assault of one hundred thousand Shadow Beasts and whose magnificent panels were once ornamented with the Founder's conquest in ancient strokes, had been destroyed. The hinges had been melted by profane fire, and the panels laid in the dirt, their surface blackened and splintered by the same destruction.

That the demonic Elder responsible for the outrage laid among them didn't soften the mourning Wu Nenqin felt for beauty now lost. The soldiers of the Sect – Disciples, Elders, heroes all – fought with the strength of the truly loyal, but Wu Nenqin knew it was hopeless. He may curse himself for his own faithlessness, but there was no deceiving what eyes and tactical senses told him. Sect Elder Chen Liwei and Sect Elder Xing Xing held two breaches, their Qi flaring like stars in the Night.

Where they stood, the enemy died. As Wu Nenqin watched, a Bloodflesh Giant was blasted off his feet by a titanic wave of energy. The creature howled like the choirs of the damned as it smashed against the Ring. The walls shuddered, shedding masonry and broken demons like falling leaves. But wherever the Sect Elders weren't, the battle was turning against them.

A thin line of Godless Night soldiers barely held the onslaught back, the Disciples hacking at their enemies with expressions that were both grim and desperate. At some points, the battle had spilled over and beyond the walls, the defenders mingling with the attackers in savage melee. Wu Nenqin saw all of this in a moment, the Night facilitating the intake of information by the din of his bloodline. Once again, he ardently wished it had passed on someone worthier. The Deputy Master twirled his sword.

The thin blade, made from a material similar to burned-out obsidian, didn't reflect as much as it devoured the reddish light, giving back nothing. There was a shimmer and his spirit companion emerged from it, the black turtle floating around the sword as if following her own set of rules. Wu Nenqin offered a weary smile, but then he straightened himself.

"With me," he said curtly, and it was ironic that, for the first time, his voice sounded like the one a proper Sect Master should wield.

"We take the fight to our enemy and teach them that the Night isn't taken without seas of blood." Disciples, all of them clad in the deep colors of the Core and Inner Courts, had gathered around him. With torn robes and chipped weapons, wounded and tired, their expression still held the grim acceptance of duty. Haoran may have been the first to kneel when he finished speaking, but they didn't hesitate to follow, hands folded in the Godless Night's gesture of undying loyalty.

Wu Nenqin couldn't have felt more unworthy. Together, they dashed toward the Second Bastion. The defenders were hard-pressed there, eyes wide and frightened as they barely held against the frenzied assaults of demonic cultivators. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Atop the Black Tortoise, Wu Nenqin selected his target, a Beginner-Rank Core Cultivator barbarian with a grotesquely swollen physique and an oiled beard bound with thick copper rings.

Seeing him coming, the demonic cultivator turned from a terrified Disciple to howl a challenge. His arm was a nightmare: worm-like veins writhed around a jagged blade, radiating a disgusting Qi that reeked of slaughter and voided bowels. Wu Nenqin had long discarded any fears. Even if it managed to pierce through its defenses, the Fear Qi wouldn't have found purchase over his mind. His Nightjar Sword whistled sharply as it swung, clashing with the bone-blade amidst an eruption of contrasting Qi.

To his credit for such a subpar cultivation, the barbarian stepped back instead of falling. Blade shedding chips like a crumbling temple, he brought it back again, the weapon twisting and reforming into a spinal column that swung like a whip. Qi condensed around the blow, friction all but wreathing it in fire. Wu Nenqin danced back, his shadow rising and coalescing around him. The whip slashed into it with an incongruously soft thud.

The shadow held for a moment before shearing apart like wet cloth, ebony fragments breaking apart. The barbarian laughed, but then triumph froze on his face as the shell revealed nothing. He had the time to look surprised. Then his body fell apart in neatly cut chunks. As he emerged from the shadows, Wu Nenqin couldn't help but mourn again. For the Sect to fall to these dirty excuses of men… Haoran wasn't nearly as subtle.

The old man crashed among the assailants like a meteor, sending broken bodies flying among displaced air and flying debris, even as two cultivators were crushed under his monstrous weight. Three barbarians swung bone-blades, only for two of them to have their heads swiped off their necks by savage backhanded blows. The third stepped back, eyes wide as he took in the stump left of his weapon, before a shadow fell over him.

Wu Nenqin nodded as the Adjutant and the Disciples finished off the attackers and helped the defenders. Trying to catch his breath, he glanced beyond the walls. Again, he regretted it. The Twelve Demon Alliance had brought all their forces to bear to crush the Godless Night once and for all. The air twisted with the weight of demonic Qi and ran with ash and fire. Hundreds of thousands crowded the land before the walls, filling the air with a ruckus of howling, baying and braying.

Compared to their number, the Sect forces were stretched thin, held together only by loyalty and sheer desperation. Wu Nenqin felt despair wash over him. Against such numbers, what could they do? The Sect had been fighting non-stop for seven days by now. The siege had been steadily tightening for thirty years. The Disciples were tired and wounded. Even the Elders were suffering. Their stores were running dry. They may have just thrown back an assault, but how long until the one they couldn't stop?

Until they were too exhausted to swing their swords? And in the distance, the invaders' leadership remained non-committed, waiting for the moment when they would be drained enough they could take their lives in a fell swoop. Wu Nenqin was taught that a true leader had to maintain a calm facade in any circumstances. It still took all of his strength to keep from shaking a fist against those distant figures. If only he had more troops, he would have ordered a sortie.

It wouldn't have assured them victory, but at least they could have brought some of those fiends down with them. And a quick, brave end was preferable to watching the dismantling of their heritage. Wu Lin. Wu Yan. Be safe. While he held nothing but trust for his elder sister, he ardently wished the guards he had ordered to bring his little sister away would be succesfull. Wu Lin was too stubborn for her own good. She would have preferred to remain and die with the Sect rather than see reason and escape.

That was why he had ordered her food drugged and for her to be shipped off, by force if trickery failed. The Sect may fall and their heritage with it, but at least the name Wu would survive. Zhang Fu, you fiend! I hope your new masters pay you your dues!

When he had taken the leadership of the Sect from his ailing father, he had been painfully aware that his youth made him a poor choice for the seat, but not even in his darkest moments would he have suspected that an esteemed Sect Elder would stoop to murder one of his colleagues and throw his lot with the eastern demons. That Sect Elder Bai You and many Elders would dare to despoil the treasuries and flee after their hard-won victory over the traitors was already a disgrace upon their honor, but this?

This was the blackest treachery, unthinkable, unforgivable. They'll burn our home, Wu Nenqin thought with growing rage. They'll take our Disciples for their foul rituals and enslave the people we were entrusted. His emotions fed into his Core, energy and feelings intermingling until the mystical organ was burning with a dark, cold flame. His Black Tortoise took it, fed upon the mouthfuls he gave her, and started to swell. She swelled to the size of a house, of a palace, of a mountain.

She swelled until she loomed over the walls and the battle like the palm of Buddah himself, until she was almost large enough to adequately portray the rage he felt. Only then did he let her go. The impact was cataclysmic. The Black Tortoise dug through the sieging army like a boat in a river, twin plumes of debris aking up her wings as she left a devastated trench behind her. Wu Nenqin kept her going as much as he could before his strength failed him, and he fell to his knees, gasping.

Devoid of his Qi, the Black Tortoise disappeared in motes of amethyst light. But the damage that remained was nothing short of devastating. Thousands had died in the assault, a whole section of the invading army having been brutally gouged off. Wu Nenqin knew it was useless. Even as he struggled to hold his draining supply, laughter echoed from the castle held aloft by the massive Bloodflesh Colossus. A haunting, mocking melody wafted across the battlefield and in its wake, blossoms of flame littered the trench.

They opened a moment later, releasing more capering demons and demonic beasts that filled the section once more. Wu Nenqin gritted his teeth. He had blundered again. Letting his temper get the better of him and wasting the last of his Qi against easily replaceable footsoldiers. As for the many cultivators he killed, what were they to their masters but grit, easily replaceable and ultimately unimportant? The floor tipped under his feet, but Haoran was there to steady him.

Dismayed, he watched in the adjutant's eyes, finding only grim acceptance. He wished he had the same grace before the end. Frustration, denial and despair roiled in his chest like things alive. All around, the Core Disciples fell to their knees. Wu Nenqin wished he had words to rally them to a brave last stand that would at least enshrine the name of the Godless Night Sect in the annals of history, but how do you give courage to others when you cannot find it in yourself?

"The Ancestor…" One babbled, a young man of barely thirty winters.

"The Ancestor will save us." He didn't seem to believe it, even as he said it, and Wu Nenqin couldn't blame him. The Ancestor was beyond worldly affairs, beyond concerning herself if ants and dust were brushed off her doorsteps. Many thought she had abandoned them as unworthy. In his case, Wu Nenqin could believe it. And yet, senseless as it was, the words set; they swept outward like fire through brush.

"The Ancestor! The Ancestor will save us!"

"O Ancestor! Save us!"

"We beg you!"

"Ancestor!" Wu Nenqin opened his mouth to tell them to stop, not to sully their last moments with graceless begging. He never got the chance. Since the moment he was born, the Night had replied to his calls. Endowed by din of his bloodline with a connection to it, he could circulate the Qi touched by it far more easily, even hide among its folds until he was all but unseen. The Night danced for him, played with him, sheltered him. It had never watched him.

Night Qi, pure, undiluted, dark like the abyss at the foot of the world; it rose from the Crater like the breath of the underworld Gods. It swept the Sect, it billowed against the Walls like a sea, it surged through the breaches and bathed the plateau in its ghostly radiance. Every Godless Night Disciple that felt its kiss shivered, then relaxed by a fraction, their dantians energized. Every invader that it brushed with its razor froze, but no relief came. Cultivators fell to their knees.

Weaker demonic beasts slumped, the Night robbing the breath from their lungs. Demons disappeared in soundless screeching, their essence subsumed into the Dark. It pulsed. Slowly, methodically, as if a great, mighty heart beat beneath. And with each pulse, words, whispered in each ear with soft, commanding tone." Who beats at my doors? Gnats or honored guests, you have my attention."" I come soon. To all my faithful, lay your worries into the Night.

To all invaders, please, array yourself in an orderly line, so that I may be presented with your necks in a timely fashion."