Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 333 - The Great Reveal

Despite my threats, the attacking elders barely flinched. Confidence sat on their faces like armor, calm, cold, and carved from long-borne certainty.

Dealing with experienced fighters like them was pretty troublesome. They had likely been part of some very dangerous squad at some point in their lives. They moved and breathed like people who had seen death a dozen times and always returned; their eyes held no panic, only the quiet calculation of veterans who believed this would be the end I’d been carved for.

For a moment, the air between us thinned; perhaps it was just an illusion, and I felt a small, bitter tick on the back of my throat. They expected to finish me here, and they had no doubt about it.

The Bone Elder grunted. Qi thickened around him like coagulating mist, then hardened into bleached-white bone in an immaculate, terrible assembly. Jagged ribs curved over his chest like the bars of a cage. Vertebrae fused into a spine-plated back. Skull fragments clattered into pauldrons that leered from his shoulders.

Layer by layer, the grotesque shell grew until he stood transformed: a towering figure in skeletal plate, every inch radiating the aura of death. He looked less like a cultivator and more like a Death Knight.

Damn. That was badass. I wouldn’t mind something like that for myself.

Sure, the slow-ass transformation sequence was a dangerous weakness, but that could be ironed out with practice.

“That bone armor looks kinda cool. Can you make it into an Earth Grade technique everyone could learn?” I asked.

“Do not mock me, boy,” the Bone Elder snapped, turning his skull-like mask toward his team. “I will fight him in close combat so he can’t use poison or arrays again. You should look for an opening to strike.”

They were saying their plan out loud; either they didn’t care that I heard, because they were sure I couldn’t stop them, or they planned misdirection. Both were plausible.

A significant risk of group fighting with powerful cultivators was mutual interference, as broad techniques clashed and openings opened and closed.

So what were they planning? Why put on bone armor? One obvious reason: protection against my poison needles. If the armor kept the fangs from piercing skin, the venom would never reach the bloodstream.

My bet: someone else would use a wide-area attack, an AOE move I couldn’t dodge. Which elder? Probably one whose element I hadn’t seen yet, the wildcard ready to take me by surprise.

What kind of interesting element? I could hardly wait to see.

But my predictions were cut short as the Bone Elder charged like a bull, each step cracking the ground. The air around him whistled, an arrow cutting through the wind.

Damn, he could move fast in that armor. Really was like a charging bull.

Green flames roared to life around my fists, coiling and hardening into jade gauntlets. Intricate dragon engravings blazed along the sides, their eyes glowing as if real beasts were trapped inside.

I didn’t bother covering my whole body, as it would be too much of a Qi drain. The gauntlets would be enough.

He reached me in a heartbeat. Our fists collided, a ringing shockwave rippling outward, a gust of force tugging at my hair.

“Our strength seems about equal, despite you being at a higher stage,” I told him. “Guess you haven’t trained physically in a while. Age takes its toll, even on cultivators.”

Age didn’t usually matter much, but I was at my physical peak while he was in decline. And I was used to fighting Song Song, her pressure far outstripped anything these guys could muster. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

This was somewhat disappointing, as it was an actual life-and-death battle, and I knew these guys would kill me if they could.

Then I felt it: scorching Qi swelling in the air. It radiated from the red-haired elder, the one whose element I hadn’t seen yet. He raised his hand, fingers slicing the air with precision.

A thin crimson line appeared just above his head.

It widened, glowing white-hot at the edges, until it peeled open to reveal a single burning eye. A living flame, crimson iris unblinking, its gaze prickling against my skin.

Fire element? Destructive, but predictable. Boring, really.

The eye flared. A beam of searing flame shot forth, tearing through the air with devastating speed. Space twisted and shrieked around it, crimson firestorm swallowing the world. Heat crashed down like a tidal wave, promising to burn everything to ash.

But just before it struck, the heat vanished.

A sphere of sigils flared around us, fire-etched script weaving into a seamless dome. The array drank in the inferno greedily, its surface glowing brighter as it absorbed rather than resisted. The searing torrent hammered against us, but within the dome there was no heat or effect from outside reaching in, and the fire began to wilt and grow weaker.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

This was the Blazing Sun Sect. I had learned more fire-related arrays than I knew what to do with. There were five variations of the Fire Supressing Array I knew.

The Bone Elder and I stood side by side, caught in the same blazing sphere, our shadows flickering across the curved walls of my prison-turned-shield.

For a second he looked puzzled, then recovered and began pounding at the barrier, trying to force his way out.

“C’mon now, don’t make this harder than it has to be,” I said, my voice low as my fingers formed a sharp hand seal.

The array shuddered. Its patterns twisted as I reversed the flow; the Qi it had greedily absorbed from the fiery assault surged outward and reshaped into a construct of my own design.

With a flash the energy condensed into a blazing crimson chain, its links glowing like molten iron fresh from the forge. It hissed through the air and coiled around the armored Bone Elder.

The chain tightened loop by loop, constricting like an enormous anaconda until his skeletal plating groaned and he was bound fast.

As the fire beyond the barrier died, I turned toward the red-haired elder, the Fire Elder. His element was fire. Boring, in a way; sixty to seventy percent of elders in the Blazing Sun Sect used flame.

Foundation Techniques were usually intensely personal, and most remained secret even after their users died, but I’d read enough to know this fellow wasn’t the most interesting or original practitioner in the lot.

I let the space around me unravel. The air warped and shivered; dark fractures spread like cracks in glass, and unseen hands seemed to seize me. In the next heartbeat the world folded inward and I slipped through the tear, reappearing silently behind the red-haired elder.

A genuine ripple of shock flashed across the elders’ faces. Their composure fractured for an instant, too late.

My palm pressed the back of the red-haired elder’s head, and I engaged my Foundation Technique. Time lurched and slowed to a crawl; every breath stretched into drawn-out eternity. In that suspended silence, I reached past his defenses and sifted through his thoughts.

Fragments surfaced like reflections on a still pond: ingrained habits, the rhythms of his fighting style, and, most crucially the strategies the elders favored when they acted as one. Their cohesion, plans, and patterns lay bare in the theater of his mind.

When I finished, I locked him in place with mental power so his brain couldn’t send signals to the rest of his body. I usually avoided this mental technique; it carried risk, but I needed the practice. I had something planned soon and would have to do this to someone far more dangerous; better to take the risk now and get used to it.

Without much fanfare, I conjured a jade dagger into being and sank it into the back of the red-haired elder’s skull. His body went slack the instant the blade found bone. There was no scream nor theatrics, just the slow drift of life unthreading, and he crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“Two down, five more to go,” I said with a smile, baiting them into recklessness. “This is easier than I expected. Seems the older generation isn’t as impressive as I thought.”

That landed. The Leaf and Flutter Elders frowned, while the rest glared at me with open hostility. Killing two of their comrades had rattled them, proof that even their vaunted composure had limits.

From the corner of my eye, I caught movement. The lone female elder drifted toward the Bone Elder, who still writhed against my bindings. Her face was calm, almost serene, as if the chaos around her wasn’t worth noticing. With measured grace, she raised a slender flute to her lips.

A soft, lilting note spilled into the air. It sounded delicate. The melody threaded itself into the battlefield like silk, subtle at first and then went deeper, resonating within my array. The fiery chains trembled, fractures spiderwebbing across their surface. Each note pressed harder, until with a shattering crack, the bindings collapsed into sparks, freeing the Bone Elder.

A Sound Element user? Very interesting.

Usually, fights weren’t exciting. But seeing the elders’ unique elements and how they’d honed them, this was different. This was instructive. I was learning. And for that reason alone, I decided to drag the fight out a little longer.

“Everyone,” the Leaf Elder suddenly called, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Prioritize retreat.”

Retreating? Now?

I frowned. That didn’t fit my plan.

“Why?” the Bone Elder demanded, voice muffled behind his mask. His armor creaked as he stepped closer.

“I have to agree with the Bone Elder here,” I added dryly.

“Bone Elder?” he echoed, and even through the mask I felt his irritation at the nickname.

“You’re all strong, and I’m barely keeping up. Just look at how much Qi I’m wasting. That teleportation technique wasn’t cheap,” I said, showing weakness on purpose.

“He’s lying,” the Leaf Elder snapped, his gaze sharp. “Before coming here, I researched the guardian of this library. You’re not officially registered, but it’s common knowledge you’re an Array Conjurer. And rumors say you’re Elder Cai Hu’s student.”

“Well, that’s creepy,” I said flatly.

“Yet you’ve barely used arrays so far,” the Leaf Elder continued, ignoring me. “But when you did, the tide turned instantly.”

“I’m not good at arrays, and they take a lot of Qi,” I tried one last time to misdirect.

“Though your cultivation talent is lacking, you’re without a doubt the kind of person whose fighting power defines a generation,” he pressed. “And you revealed yourself by killing Jinquan Doren and Huo Zhanglao.”

Hm? So those were their names.

“The reason you eliminated them first wasn’t random. Their elements were too simple, and you weren’t interested in seeing their Foundation Techniques.”

He was close. Too close. He was overanalyzing, but he was not wrong.

“That’s a wild claim you made…" I sighed, running a hand through my hair. "But you’re absolutely right.”

Now that he’d called me out, dragging things further was pointless. Beating them and preventing their escape were two different challenges, and with the Bone Elder’s substitution tricks, nailing him down wouldn’t be easy.

I clapped my hands, locking into an intricate handseal.

At once, a vast greenish array erupted outward, swallowing half a mile of darkness. Runes flared to life, racing across the ground like serpents of living jade. Above, a shimmering dome convulsed with power, drinking greedily from the roiling Qi in the air and the cold, inexhaustible Yin light of the full moon.

The sky trembled. Purple lightning split the sky, threading through the array in jagged rivers. Each strike roared like a thousand war drums. Sparks cascaded down like burning rain, painting the battlefield in blinding light.

I drew in a single breath and held it.

Then, the lightning storm fell.