Chapter 9-260: The Storm Strikes! (1/2)
The guns stopped firing as Sama smirked, an occasional pop or two happening as Daoists on the walls poked their heads up, intercepted the bullets already on the way for them, and soon no more heads were poking up.
“Bring it down!” Briggs ordered, and the world heaved.
The spiraling jetsilver-and-rainbow helices of two Spellflares came spinning through the rain, impacting on the obdurate and roiling smooth hemisphere of The Egg of Nine Dragons. The Formation wasn’t a force field so much as a deflecting screen of energy, absorbing and redirecting incoming energy, a combination of effects much stronger than a mere rigid defense.
Naturally it was totally useless against Energized Lead ammunition, totally null to magic and treating the Formation as air. The Cyclonic enchantment on the rifles sent them through the rain and winds without faltering or being misdirected in the slightest, while Chained True Seeking spells on the snipers helped their Watersighting Eagle Eyes pick out targets at a time-sighting +20 Insight bonus to hit, the maximum bonus possible for the basic spell.
A massive downpour and illusions concealing their presence did the rest.
Now, the Spellflares coming in at a Caster Level close to Fifty hit the Egg, and promptly ripped that section of the field apart into wild magic.
Chirping polycolored sparrows flew in all directions, incidentally putting new holes in confused Daoists in the way. A vortex of razored pickles sliced out in one direction, and slow spider-webs fell down and cut through everything in their path over there. Leaves tumbled about, struck the living, and detonated like each one was made of solid C4.
Of course, the Qi going wild left a momentary hole in the protection of The Egg.
Only three Thunderbolts came down from above on that anchoring Node, but 66d8+500 or so was more than enough to blow it, and all the Daoists helping supply it with extra energy, into stray chunks of burning matter shooting in all directions.
A sixth of the protective Egg promptly vanished, and even as the first raindrops were hitting them and the Daoists were gaping up at the loss of their protection, another ten Thunderbolts came down on them.
These bolts were seething with both Divine and Primal power, and mere protection against electricity did nothing to protect the Daoists, all of whom had gone through at least one Lightning Tribulation.
One whole wall of the Sect was obliterated, along with all the Daoists on or near it, and then two more Thunderbolts came shooting in from angles, raging in along underneath the remaining Dome. They drove into the bases of two other Nodes, blasting out their foundations and short-circuiting fully half the Nodes of the Formation.
The Cultivators in the front of the Sect could feel the wind and rain assaulting them, and only gape in horror at the skies seething so madly above them, feeling a horrible, awesome pressure up above that was far, far beyond any Lightning Tribulation.
“I Bring Your Last Day,” whispered into all their ears on the wind, and the skies truly opened up.
The Haze itself burned away from the discharge, and all the people outside were facing in the opposite direction as the light which would have burned out their eyeballs was fractured and spread in all directions, the holy energies imbued in it dancing in the skies in gold and silver and rainbow glory.
For just a moment, the wrath of heaven coming down bathed everything in the Light of Heaven, and then the Thunder hit.
Without a Sound Bubble, the shooters and normal people nearby likely would have died from curdled blood at the volume of the noise. The Daoists were screaming as their ears blew out, their Qi roiling inside them as it tried to adjust to the truly anathemic energies of the Primal and Divine raging through this lightning. Thunderbolts pounded at every single cluster of them in killing strokes that fanned twenty paces across, and blew Daoists into bloodspray as their Qi was overloaded.
The falling rain cut off like a knife as Briggs roared, “Over the walls and at them!”
The thousands of natives of Shanghai, raising butcher’s knives, clubs, old spears, scavenged Weapons from dead Cultivators, or even just their bare hands, all such things now burning with Banefire and the glow of Magic Weapons, turned as the Lights of Heaven danced in crackling overlight in the raging clouds above them, and howled as they raced for those shattered walls blown into scattered ruins by the falling lightning. Where they didn’t form a hill, arches of force politely appeared and extended across them. The wildly-running townsfolk of Shanghai surged into the Sect of the Jade Dragon, led by the endless, no ammo-conserving gunfire of hundreds of pistols and rifles blazing with +V Banefire Goodness.
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A lot of Qi-heavy figures in the Heavens-Up Display were bolting for the rear of the Sect, and The Egg of Nine Dragons and its impotent ability to turn the force of an attacker back at them was abandoned, fizzling out and fading as it lost its controllers.
Ten Thunderbolts came down and blew the Qi-Gathering Formation into craters of rock, igniting a vivic firestorm in the heart of the Sect there. More pounding Thunderbolts came down, chasing after the fleeing Daoists anywhere they clustered up, and not incidentally blowing the total shit out of the grandiose pagodas, mansions, halls, and other buildings they were trying to hide in or running through in their haste to escape out the back.
The first ones there slid to a halt, eyes wide as they stared at the entire assembled force of Dragon Warriors and Dragon Hand Adepts of Taiwan, currently twice normal size, seething with all kinds of mystical enhancements and Buffs, waiting for them.
Way faster than they believed any force of measly Powered should be able to move, the oh-so-ready martial artists of Taiwan came for the Cultivators, not bothering to waste any mercy on them.
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Jade Dragon was almost to his secret escape tunnel when the Axe came slicing through the paneled wall to his right and bit deep into his side. Swirling Helices gathered about the edge of it, eating away the Qi that naturally rose to stop it, and the force and impact of it sent the Daoist Sect Leader spinning and stumbling away into a large potted vase of precisely tended bamboo grasses on his left.
He was totally surprised when a little man unfolded from the shadow of said vase and buried two long daggers in his chest, gaping at the child-like killer who had administered such lethal wounds to him.
With a curse, he spun away, gasping, his palm smashing into the little man and hurling him back towards the looming orc crashing through the wall behind him, old black and weathered grey ribbons of color contrasting the interchanging white and whorls of the little man. Jade Dragon gasped as he pulled on the torch leading to the tunnel-
There was no sense of killing intent as two slender swords swirling with all the colors of the rainbow, burning with death, inserted themselves into his neck and chest, the swordsman beyond staring into his eyes with orbs full of revulsion and hate.