Chapter 17-426: The Yellow of Fear (2/2)
Of course, this was pretty potent magic, and right about now she heard the wailing in the air from the Sect as they sensed it. The Badges she’d collected were all buzzing with the alert.
The more sophisticated Badges could actually convey messages, so they’d know someone was out here.
She smiled as she looted via TK, and Daoists burned. Qi-infused Weapons, light Armor, and knickknacks like the Badges spun through the air and piled up on her Disk, her payment for ridding the world of these abominations.
Twenty miles to the phasma. “Over hills, over dales, as we hit the rusty trails...” she laughed as she took off, sticking to the trail.
The Daoists ahead would be locked into fighting with the phobos. By her estimation, they would just consider themselves a wall she would run into if she went that way, while the main surge would be coming from the Sect behind her, spreading out in a wave to force her to the edge of the territory or into the phasma alone.
But, come on. There were scores, if not hundreds, of ready-to-kill Daoists up ahead of her. Could she possibly turn that down?
No, no, she could not. Humming very happily with the joy of finally reaching Nine, she sprinted off for the experiential training grounds of the Heavenly Sky Sect.
They’d know her magic was still here, and roughly the range, but the Astral Ward on her Oathring would completely obfuscate the direction. The lack of response from the Badges of those she’d killed would give them her rough location, and they’d come boiling out of the Sect, itching for revenge.
Yeah, she knew that feeling they had. It welled up in her whenever she had to smell this stinking Qi.
It smelled like rotting stone and moldering snow here, carried on decaying wind and hyperaggressive allergens. Most of those smells didn’t even EXIST naturally. UGH! They all deserved to die just for introducing her to the broad array of stenches they had forced her to experience...
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They really didn’t expect her to go all the way to the training area. A shocked squad managed to get off a Message from five miles away before she slaughtered them all, but there was a problem in responding to the reality of the situation.
Most of the Daoists were out there in the yellow fog of the phasma hunting phobos, which were also hunting them. Their spiking fear and alarm was actually sending roiling currents through the phasma, congealing newer, faster creatures for them to fight out of their own emotions.
The boogey-men inspired by Powered coming to hunt them created more boogey-men. Their urgent desire to retreat to a place of safety drew more phobos in like bees to honey trying to stop them from doing just that, and the general retreat became quite a frenzied, hacking mess as the Heavenly Sect members tried to withdraw along the miles they’d come into the phasma and get back outside it.
Five miles at a sprint from Sama, even in these mountains, took less than three minutes.
The first groups coming out from the fog were generally the weakest disciples, those who stayed closest to the border area, and so were definitely the least qualified to take her on.
“Tremble, oOoO, Tremble, She comes...” came the haunting Voice rising from the Sword in her hand.
They knew of the Dao of Song, and tried to steel their thoughts against the sonic effect, but it wormed its way into their hearts as she came burning up the valley pass. The Words were echoing off the sides of the mountains, growing as they did, fast, so fast, coming for them with the Banefire that burned the same exact hue as their own blood, the terrible hungry unwhite fire... and the burning judgement of truly Holy flames.
Their screams seemed to become just side notes in the Song as she tore into them. The shrieking, whistling Techniques of windblades and Distance Death and Driving Points and Whirlwind Cuts and everything else tore apart the stones around her and in front of her... and vanished within ten feet of her like rain falling into a lake. They were devoured as surely as their hopes fell into her blue eyes and were taken from them in an explosion of violence.
“The Sky is falling, Heaven has come,
Sama is here to ruin your fun.
She tastes your fear in this stinking fog,
She sees you cringing like a beaten dog.
The Yellow King and his waxen grin,
Sees you where the fog runs thin.
His Curse, His doom, upon you all,
Your souls to the Land on which you fall!
Tremble, oOoO, Tremble, She comes...”
Blades, thrusts, stabs, scythes, arcs, and wedges of sword-Qi cut wildly everywhere, and Sama ignored them. Multi-colored flames, all of them hungry for Daoists, looking like the leashed fury of Creation coming to devour them, ripped into them as they tried to scatter and surround her... and more than a few of them went stumbling and sprawling in shock when their lightfoot and movement techniques failed to work. Easy jumps that should have covered dozens of paces barely got them off the ground, and unprepared, they went tumbling and sliding clumsily across the rocky ground of the mountains.