Their little cave shook in the middle of the night. However, the shaking didn’t come from above where cultivators would try to reach them. It came from the back of the cave.

  Yu Di got up, took out his short staff and stood on guard.

  A large claw shot out and struck him right in the chest. If he didn’t have his staff up, it would have caved in his chest.

  However, he wished he had his original trident though. The staff, even imbued with Qi, snapped in half, the splinters digging into his tunic.

  The strike pushed Yu Di back to the center of the cave.

  Two other cultivators weren’t so lucky. They were closest to the back of the cave so they took the biggest hit from the spirit beast.

  The claw retracted and a large mole face appeared at the hole.

  “Everyone out!” Bai Feng ordered. She took out twin butterfly knives from her storage ring. The purple Qi rolling off them smelled like lilacs. She charged the large mole right as it reached out with another claw.

  Someone dragged Yu Di from the floor, holding him up by his armpits. He tried to shake the feeling from his head, but his body was more sluggish than usual.

  They managed to get to the lip of the cliff and the person dragging Yu Di dropped him like a sack of rice. When he looked up, he was surprised it was Fu Homei that dragged him.

  “Thank you Senior Fu,” Yu Di said.

  “We’re even now.” Fu Homei looked up at the sky. “But I don’t think it will matter very soon. We have many incoming enemies.”

  Yu Di peered upwards into the night sky. He couldn’t see anything, but he heard it. It sounded like a low hum.

  “Friend or foe?” Yu Di asked.

  “Most definitely foes.” Fo Homei took out her dadao, a short and wide blade with a clipped tip. The girl looked like an ancient warrior goddess as she raised it above her with two hands. Her flowing blue robes clung to her body as her weapon glowed orange.

  “Remember, we fight as a team,” Yu Di called out to the other disciples. Mostly that was for Fu Homei.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make short work of these fools. None of them are at the Core Formation stage.” Fu Homei slashed the air with her dadao, sending a spark of orange flying through the sky like a blade of wind.

  Sparks lit up the night sky as her technique collided with the fliers. There were at least a dozen of them, all in black tunics. The shot only grazed them as they kept coming.

  “I must still be weak from earlier,” Fu Homei said.

  Bai Feng dashed out of the cave on her flying sword.

  “Why are we still here? The mole is coming out of the cave.”

  Fu Homei pointed toward the incoming group of black tunics.

  Bai Feng squinted at them before zipping upwards toward them with her butterfly knives.

  “All of you head for the area we discussed earlier. Junior Fu, protect them. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Move, move, move,” Fu Homei said. She brandished her dadao at the disciples who moved slower than the rest.

  Yu Di dragged himself up and cleaned off the debris from his tunic. None of the splinters from the staff punctured it, but it took a while to clear it off without cutting himself.

  He liked this tunic too. It was the first non-gray tunic he wore since he joined the sect. But it wasn’t meant to be.

  With a quick change, he took out his old gray tunic and wore that instead. He stood out like a sore thumb, but at least he didn’t potentially have splinters pushing through his gut.

  Bai Feng managed to hold most of the black tunics at bay with her butterfly swords, but at least five of them broke off and flew at their group.

  “I’ll deal with them,” Fu Homei said. “You all keep running.”

  Yu Di stopped and took out his long staff.

  “You should also keep running. You’re too weak for them.”

  Yu Di twirled his long staff, activating the runes on the staff. Each one held one of the elements, earth, water, fire, metal, and wood. He couldn’t activate them all at once, but two at a time should be possible. If he was a demigod he'd be able to activate them all.

  If he had to guess, he was currently as strong as a weakened Fu Homei.

  “Fine, stay then, but I won’t take responsibility for you,” Fu Homei said.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’m only here to help Elder Bai,” Yu Di said. “So don’t feel that you need to protect me or anything.”

  Fu Homei scoffed.

  “I’m going to end these fools in one swing.” She charged up her dadao again, turning it bright orange. It kept glowing brighter and brighter as if to signal to the approaching enemy to focus on her and not the disciples running away.

  Yu Di followed suit by pushing his Qi into the fire rune and the metal rune. His staff glowed a bright red like the color of a red spider lily.

  The black suits came rushing in with different colored swords. They were flying on a long wooden plank, powered by a Qi artifact underneath.

  Yu Di stepped forward and pushed out a wide range technique. He had forgotten the name, but he remembered how well it could defend. His staff turned into a large wooden wall and blocked the black tunics’ attack.

  However, their Qi attacks pushed through his technique, sending a pulse right through Yu Di’s hands. It knocked him back.

  Yu Di felt the foreign Qi run up his hands, toward his chest. He stopped his blocking technique to put up a different kind of Qi wall within his chest.

  The four strands of Qi slammed into the wall, crumpling it, but going no further.

  Yu Di collapsed onto the ground. It didn’t help that he suffered a similar strike from the mole before. His internal organs were threatening to rupture.

  He curled up into a ball and kept an eye on the fight.

  Curse unlocked: .3% lifted.

  Fu Homei was having a grand time though. After Yu Di absorbed the first strike from the black tunics, she dove at them with her dadao. Since she wasn’t pushed back by their Qi, she could swing with her full strength.

  Yes, she was weakened from exhaustion earlier, but she had enough strength to cut off two of their heads in one swing. Sadly, the dadao swung downwards and merely clipped the third one.

  Soon enough, Fu Homei had cut down the third and fourth black tunic.

  The girl was right that these were weak compared to her, but the fight still took a toll on her. Fu Homei got down to one knee and used her dadao as a crutch to keep herself upright.

  People think cultivator fights were simple. Attack with Qi and whoever had the stronger Qi won. Except they never realized that Qi was a fundamental force that pushed back when struck. Each strike on these cultivators stressed Fu Homei to her current limit.

  Normally, Yu Di as a demigod could shrug off these attacks due to his boundless Qi. Even Fu Homei in peak condition could do so, but now she looked more likely to collapse. Yet she still looked to the sky to watch Bai Feng’s fight with the remaining black tunics.

  “Senior Fu… expel the Qi from your body,” Yu Di gasped.

  Fu Homei blinked for a second and looked at Yu Di as if he said the most ridiculous thing in the world. She sat down, crossed her legs, and pushed the foreign Qi out of her body.

  In minutes she was up. Fu Homei walked over to Yu Di and pressed a palm to his back.

  In seconds, Yu Di felt his meridians returning to normal as she flushed the Qi out of his system. Exhaustion overwhelmed him and threatened to knock him out, but the sound of Bai Feng’s butterfly swords reminded him that he still had work to do.

  Yu Di sat up and cultivated. He pulled the ambient Qi into his body and refreshed himself as best as he could. Physically he was mostly fine, but the rampaging Qi from earlier damaged his meridians.

  It would take him hours later to fix everything, but this was enough to continue the fight.

  The black tunics harassed Bai Feng, hoping to tire or weaken her with their numbers. Bai Feng couldn’t score any direct hits on the black tunics without exposing herself. It would only be a matter of time before she lost this war of attrition.

  “How are we getting up there?” Fo Homei asked.

  “Can’t you fly up there?” Yu Di said.

  “I don’t have enough Qi to power my white fan and fight them.”

  Yu Di eyed the black tunics flying board.

  “I have an idea.”

  Yu Di looked over the board. It was a normal board, but the Qi artifact attached to it was crude but ingenious. It allowed anyone of any level and skill to fly. But how did they control it?

  Yu Di searched the corpses for a device to control it. He found a round black jade that matched the Qi artifact. He pushed a little Qi into it and found the controls for the artifact.

  The board lifted up and hovered for a second before coming back down.

  “We have our ride,” Yu Di said. “Think you can protect me while I fly this thing?”

  “Only if you don’t crash,” Fu Homei said.

  Yu Di hopped onto the board and made it hover. The controls were intuitive. It felt almost the same as when he flew on his own flying artifacts. They didn’t have any of his armaments though.

  Fu Homei hopped onto the board.

  The artifact had a way to keep other people on it without falling off. This was definitely a marvel of ingenuity. If the board survived, Yu Di planned on studying it so that he can fly again. The pair zoomed upwards toward Bai Feng.

  The thought of flying on his own again was amazing. He flew in a few instances in the last year or so when he was taken, like with Yu Lin’s mother or with Bai Feng, but there was something about flying on his own that really changed the way he felt about the world.

  It’s like he had been a bird with his wings clipped.

  If he could fly like this every day, he wouldn’t have felt so fatalistic in the last few years. Maybe he wouldn’t have sought death instead of trying to the very last moment.

  Now he’s flying in the air toward some cultivators intent on killing them all. These black tunics had their very own boards as they flew around Bai Feng.

  Yu Di made sure to get as close as possible, but as low as possible. So that by the time he was underneath at least two of them, he jerked the board up.

  Fu Homei was ready for them. Her dadao exploded in orange and cut them right down the middle, splitting both of them in half. The sparks lit the night sky for many li in all directions.

  Yu Di swung out his staff and knocked one black tunic from her board. She screamed as she fell.

  The fight became one sided right after that. With the threat of a mid-stage Core Formation cultivator, the others surrendered.

  Yu Di had the luxury of collecting their flying boards as well as collecting all the valuables they had on them. After he tied them up in heavy, coarse hemp rope, he dragged them onto the boards and flew toward their agreed upon location.

  They made it to the location without further problems, but life was never easy.

  When they got there, Elder Li and a group of other disciples had Yu Di’s squad mates surrounded. They all had Qi weapons out, pointed at their fellow disciples.

  Yu Di groaned. Why hadn’t that pompous, self absorbed fool died by now? And worse, what did he want from his squad mates?