Chapter 16-416: Stay in Proper Formation (1/2)

No, I wasn’t going diving willy-nilly into the remaining Sect lands to scout out what was going on. That was just silly.

The Cultivators had their own ‘technology’, mostly dealing in advanced Formations and what such things could accomplish. The Void Brothers had it right, as Cultivator tech in this area had improved drastically quite recently, and things they’d simply not been capable of before were proliferating.

That meant they’d Summoned in higher Level Daoists from Outside. Well, hardly unexpected after the first one. Rather than seeing that one’s explosive death and necrofying of the Sect that Summoned her as a failure, the Daoists merely saw the Sect as idiots who got what they deserved for relying on the power of the Shroud, and went with more ‘righteous’ methods that didn’t involve bringing in a Death follower who wanted to make them all undead.

Oh, and probably ones a LOT less powerful, because they didn’t want to die instantly if their pleas for help became screams of terror. They weren’t the Mantra, who would obediently be slaves to anything they brought in as a matter of course.

Whoever they brought in was enough to get the complexity of doing so up into the 15 Ranks range, which a whole lot of not many folks on the planet could even recognize, let alone understand, design, and implement. I had enough Martial Lore Ranks to identify the shit with my modifier, but I didn’t understand the underlying principles all that much.

I wasn’t an expert in Qi manipulation. Weird, right?

Still, that was enough to understand that massive sensory Formations were in place to track magical items, spells, and beings throughout all the areas claimed by the Daoists. Any intrusions could be tracked and reacted to quickly, and if they didn’t have Marks and Blessings, it didn’t matter all that much with the equivalent of Messages and Sendings being used with the right Tokens of theirs, also proliferating.

Not all the Sects had done all this at first... until the first couple did, and the rest realized that they were just going to get dominated and absorbed unless they followed suit. The nine most powerful Sects had gone ahead and done so, and in effect sold themselves, their disciples, their civilians, and the whole damned planet out to Daoists from Outside the Shroud.

Gods, I hated Cultivators. “Oh, but you Summon in Demons and Devils, neener-neener.” And Angels, you bastards! “We only Summon in our elders! Clearly we’re better than you!” And they’re like magnified shit-head versions of you!

Fucktards. We didn’t dare bring the Shroud down with senior Cultivators here, or it would start an instant planet-wide war of Summoning and extinction. Daoists and Buddhists alike would happily slaughter all the mortals so others couldn’t have them, as they’d proven here, over and over...

That said, if I made a move into their space now, they’d sense it instantly, panic, and start doing wide-scale massacres and setting off all kinds of deadly things. Ergo, I couldn’t go scouting.

A Source couldn’t, obviously. A Void Brother technically could... except the Cultivators had stuff now that detected the trail of exuded mana a Brother left behind, and so could track them down that way. Very inconvenient.

That meant Nulls, and specifically Nulls who didn’t need to use magic items.

It meant a Nine with an almighty Null Aura, and a wickedly gleeful sense of humor at what she was about to arrange.

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Wow, it was quiet.

It was the first time in a lot of years that she was alone in her own head.

All her Marks were down. Tremble was quiet, Phased into her heart. Her Tats were not charged. She had nothing but her own hands and feet to kill things with, and no links to the outside to back her up.

Well, she could put them all back up with a few seconds of effort, but that would basically start the alarms blaring and things hunting her in massive numbers.

She was very sure of just how bloody durable she was, but thousands of Daoists didn’t seem like a wise thing to tempt.

Now, if she was next to an active Shroudzone at the same time, it sounded like real fun to see how long many of the milkmen would last. Her hands flexed, and ki sharpened the edges of her hands in reflex.

Their little Qi Formation edifices couldn’t track ki like they could magic. It was too far down the fundamental meter, and her Null covered her completely if they were trying to track life forces or something.

She was flowing across the terrain, camo-weave and ki combining to render her little more than a passing shadow as she moved with Seven Dragons lightfoot. There was no wind to mark her passage, no footsteps left behind, no scent in her wake, no broken sticks, no bent grass.

The first Sect she was checking on was Six Demon Swords Mountain.

All of the Sects had reputations, and the Dao of this one was based on domination, overbearing power, and slaughter. Thankfully for the civilians, they were too weak to provide any benefit to the disciples, but their massacring of the Powered was a given, and they had a grim reputation along the Korean border.

Well, had. Then Briggs and Shvaughn had shown up with some elite Chinese, and the two of them had shown the vaunted Daoists and their flying swords what-for in brutally efficient and very disrespectful fashion. Then the Tomb Clans under The Mick had arrived and turned them into cattle, strung up and bled for profit.

The Six Demons Sect wasn’t feeling like ruling demon princes that much anymore, and they took it out on anyone who defied them. A lot of civilians had been butchered for no reason, more had fled, and the Sect had tried to slip assassins in among the refugees.