After seeing the internal structure of the Dawntreader, she had assumed that she couldn’t possibly run into problems handling something retively inert.

  However, the protective array of the Reaper’s Grave was absolutely enormous. It didn’t just protect the whole area of the mountain, it was present all throughout the mountain too, reaching out all the way to the outer walls, and all of it was endlessly complex and filled with foreign energy. Even with the Weave of the Senses and the aid of the Demonic Tyrant to guide her along, it felt nearly impossible to spread her perception out to view the whole thing, not to mention controlling any parts of it.

  ‘… Shit. I… I may literally be unable to take control of the array,’ Bianca thought, but she didn’t give up just yet, and she most certainly didn’t express it to the reaper or any of the others, ‘I need to let the Demonic Tyrant do its work, and see where its limits lie. Maybe I’m underestimating it, or perhaps…’

  A faint sound, and tremble of the earth, forced her out of her thoughts, prompting her to look up from the array core, accidentally meeting Huang Su’s gaze.

  “… Mistress, they appear to be attempting to break in. This pce has a certain byrinthine structure, and necromancers are not known for their strong destructive capabilities against terrain, so we should have some time, but not much,” the Sect Master expined, a strand of her energy reaching through to Bianca just a moment ter, ‘In truth, the situation is dangerous, Mis- Bianca. My skills are not excellent when it comes to protecting others, especially not when the necromancers can summon numerous foes to besiege us.’

  Clearly, she didn’t want to scare the others, but Bianca couldn’t help but notice the slip-up. Given that it happened even when communicating purely through energy, it was a very, very good sign.

  ‘Hold strong, Huang Su-’

  ‘Shut it, you,’ she shut down that annoying voice in her head and returned her focus to the array, as little as she needed to let her Demonic Tyrant work.

  While she busied herself with this, the others were starting to set up their defensive positions. Song Ming’s runes were pced, one by one, at the openings, with her taking her time to recover her energy before throwing down another one. She wouldn’t have the leisure to recover ter, after all, so if she wasted everything to set things up in one go, it would only leave her defenceless.

  “Fuck, why did I ever think that I should just follow you idiots…” Han Rushu sighed, the bcksmith seeking a pce to sit down and failing to find any, “Tch. Can’t even jerk off without the threat of an overzealous Sect Master and those necromancers outside.”

  “You’re not helping yourself, Rushu,” Yu Juan giggled, although she also found herself sighing, “Still, it’s troublesome. With so many necromancers…”

  Seeing as the reaper seemed too busy directing her energy to follow Bianca’s, she chose not to speak up too much, giving only a curt word, “We’ll manage.”

  “Mistress!” Song Ming excimed excitedly, but calmed quickly, “Um, yes, we’ll be fine. We ought to believe in our Sect Mistress, and then we will succeed!”

  ‘You’re more optimistic than I am, my dear pet…’

  The earth shook again, something up above seeming to have exploded. Another explosion followed soon after, followed by more and more, as though someone set off a chain of dynamite. Although no dust – or other signs of destruction – reached them down here, it wasn’t hard to guess what was happening up there.

  “It is likely that we will be faced with enemies soon enough,” Huang Su frowned, “I will protect us as best I can, but I will be unable to solve every single threat instantly. Please attempt to obstruct whichever passageways you are near to for as long as you are able to.”

  “And most importantly, don’t let any of those bastards get to our Sect Mistress,” the kitsune added, “If she is able to secure the array, she will be able to ward them all off with ease!”

  ‘… Stop putting so much pressure on me, please. I’m barely even doing anything, and yet- ah, whatever, what can I do?’ she tried to not listen out to the various explosions and the earth trembling, and instead spread her spiritual perception out as far as the Demonic Tyrant would allow, ‘Indeed, there’s no chance I could possibly control this right now. Perhaps I could in a few more years, but as it is… and I’ve never studied arrays before, so I can hardly understand what I’m looking at.’

  She spent a while longer before she finally decided to speak to the reaper, recalling a specific thing she had mentioned during their journey here.

  “Shouge Zhe, are you familiar with the structure of the array?”

  “… You’ve the spare mental energy to converse? Hah… yes, I’ve some understanding of it,” the reaper breathed heavily, “What exactly do you need… Sect Mistress?”

  “Well, the core offensive part, or whatever would allow us to protect ourselves.”

  “… Allow me to share that detail with you,” Shouge Zhe reached out with a thread of her energy, an image filling Bianca’s mind.

  With that, overpping it onto the things she could perceive wasn’t too challenging.

  ‘Huh… That might be within reach, but…’ she had to ask again, “It requires a whole lot more than that to function, no?”

  “Correct.”

  ‘Crap,’ pretending to be slightly exhausted from doing two things at once – or what others would perceive as such, anyway – she called out to the Sect Master, “Huang Su, join us for a moment. I need your expertise.”

  “Very well, Mistress.”

  Wasting no time, she appeared by their side in a flurry of fming feathers, kneeling down beside the core of the array and spreading out her energy. Unlike Bianca’s, it was able to stretch out much further, but it was also unable to be quite as precise and careful, leading to quite a bit being wasted. Still, before long, she appeared to have overlooked the whole array, leaving her free to look to Bianca for further instructions.

  “Including the part that would protect us, how much is needed for it to work?”

  “In full?”

  “No, just the part we need.”

  “… I believe… roughly these parts,” the Sect Master sent her the image, which was significantly rger and more complex than the required channels of energy just for the offensive component.

  Nevertheless, it was more within her limits, but that still left her with an issue. Letting the Demonic Tyrant reach out to the other two and form threads of energy to connect them, she id out what she was able to come up with.

  “So, to put it simply: I have the control, but not the reach or type of energy. Huang Su has the reach, but not the control or type. Shouge Zhe, you have the type, but not the control or reach.”

  “That is, unfortunately, accurate enough,” the Sect Master nodded, “Do you have some means of overcoming this limitation in mind, Mistress?”

  “Well… I do have enough reach to control the vital part of the array – the foundation and the offensive component that Shouge Zhe pointed out to me,” she sent over the overpping images to both of them, “So… if we don’t aim to take the whole thing, but only this component…”

  “It… would be enough to drive our enemies away, and if they cannot discern the truth of this, they would be left with no option but to flee,” the reaper frowned, “But controlling only a part of the array like that doesn’t seem easy.”

  “What can be done is that the vital components can be controlled, and the rest can be separated from the array. This would disturb it, yes, but repairing an array from that point would be far easier than creating a wholly new one, as I had initially considered,” a faint smile graced Huang Su’s lips, “In this case, it might be possible to succeed.”

  Shouge Zhe seemed dissatisfied, but eventually her expression hardened with resolve, “Very well, this can be done. Until we attempt to activate the array, you shouldn’t be required, Huang Su.”

  “Which is for the best, as far as I am concerned,” the Sect Master stood up, “I will focus my attention on securing this position. Once your work is complete, Mistress, I will step in and assist you in activating the array.”

  She stepped away just in time, as well. The constant earthquakes from above had gotten closer, and voices could now be heard coming from the numerous passageways.

  Mere moments ter, the first skeletal being emerged. A small dog-shaped thing ran down the stone, right into one of Song Ming’s runes. Detonating them came naturally, but the eruption of energy differed from the others shaking the mountain, and prompted a stop to all the distant voices for a brief moment.

  And then…

  “They’re in there! Hunt them down!” an aged female voice echoed through the passageways as the earth seemed to shake again, this time from the countless footsteps.

  It wasn’t long before necromancers appeared in those passages, some of them ready with skills, others emerging only to be struck down in an instant. They had prepared well, and those that came down first were weak, or not even human, mere skeletal soldiers being sent to scout the way, so dispatching the first wave was easy.

  Naturally, that could not st.

  After the weaklings came the stronger, more prepared necromancers and their creations. Some figured out how to dodge Song Ming’s runes, others were attempting to cast curses and fire spikes of bone at them from afar without stepping into the range of their various offensive measures.

  With so many of the necromancers working together, they were starting to find openings and weaknesses. Yu Juan’s attempts to send the smarter ones among them into dream was unable to get them all, and soon some figured out to send a bunch of skeletal minions ahead of them, to detonate the runes, before charging forward before Song Ming had the chance to repce them.

  Even when she repced the types of runes she used – going from detonation to a slower burn – they came up with other means to bypass them. With enough bones to let them walk over the rune, it would do little. Against Yu Juan’s dreams, creating zombies seemed to suffice, and when trying to handle Xue Yaling’s… arsenal of artefact shards, they attempted to overwhelm it.

  Of course, not all succeeded, but there was one digit of them, and seemingly three digits of necromantic foes. Most were likely spawned through strange skills or bodies animated by those in higher realms – Bianca cked the spare spiritual perception to tell – but the numbers were still a threat.

  It felt as though they only grew and grew.

  ‘I assume that the necromancers occupying the Reaper’s Grave have saved up on quite a few bodies for their various skills. As a result, without divine sense, I cannot do more than take out everything that would threaten Mis- that would threaten us,’ Huang Su forced herself to change her words, as that violet presence fred up yet again.

  At least, she thought it did. Perhaps it was just her own mind, or some other influence, or even just the stress.

  She may be a sixth realm cultivator, but at least one of their foes was as well, not to mention the fact that she had to pay attention to dozens of entrances to this chamber. Most cultivators would struggle with handling so many factors at the same time, hence why the great arts like pill refining were difficult for most to take up, and even with her skills, Huang Su could only handle so much. Eventually, her fmes failed to stop one of them.

  “Han Rushu!” she excimed, as the necromancer’s bone spikes flew straight for the bcksmith.

  “Ah, fuck right off!” the dragon-blooded bcksmith suddenly raised her hand and struck the bone, easily shattering it to dust.

  ‘… Right, she is a bcksmith. Although she had acted incompetent the entire time she was travelling with Mistress, she is still able to manage certain… threats,’ the Sect Master sighed, quickly dispatching the necromancer – or a puppet body – with her fmes.

  “Fine, you want me to get involved? I’ll get involved!” Han Rushu yelled out as she finally stopped sitting around and charged towards one of the doorways.

  A skeleton was just attempting to approach, having crossed while Song Ming’s runes were being repced, only for Han Rushu to bash its skull in with her fist, as though she was striking metal at her forge. The skeleton colpsed in an instant, all of the bones turning to dust and leaving her standing there, breathing heavily.

  “Fucking assholes, not letting me just sit around and… jerk off, or something,” the bcksmith spat on the ground, although she kept her fists raised.

  ‘But this will not be enough,’ Huang Su took another moment to consider the matter, then spared some of her pnar energy to manifest a barrier of fme around Bianca and Shouge Zhe.

  While it would be insufficient to cover them from serious attacks from the sixth realm necromancer that resided in this pce, it would obscure their presence and cover them from more minor attacks, giving her a bit of room to breathe – something that she needed desperately.

  It would be through her power that they would activate the array, after all, and something meant to guard a force that had power equivalent to a sect would hardly be trivial to awaken.

  Already, she had spent about a tenth of her energy, if the barrier was factored in. Assuming she’d only need another tenth to be able to kick-start the array, she would only be able to keep the group safe for another few minutes.

  ‘This… fuck, how much beyond my level am I going here?’ Bianca found herself breathing heavily even with the assistance of both the Weave and Demonic Tyrant.

  They had concluded on narrowing down the portion of the array to forcefully reawaken significantly, and yet the sheer complexity of even that portion was on the brink of exceeding the overall structure of the Dawntreader. It was preposterous, in her mind, and it didn’t help that she needed to effectively control Shouge Zhe’s energy as well, meaning that she had to dedicate twice as much of her mental energy to the matter.

  Of course, if she initially spent somewhere around 0.01% per second, now she’d have to spend 0.02%, which was hardly significant, but still, with enough time…

  ‘Worst part is, my energy doesn’t really belong, so I need Shouge Zhe to be leading me around. If I could somehow bypass that, or make our energy a little more… harmonious…’ a light fshed in her eyes as she looked inward, at her dark and demonic energy, ‘… Maybe… maybe I can.’

  Xue Yaling had been using up a lot of her energy from the start, releasing a ghostfme wisp with every skill she used. It was equivalent to simply draining it away, until she finally had enough at a number of the entrances to the chamber. Then, as a number of skeletons and other foes gathered in those passageways, she finally unleashed her pn.

  “Behold!” she shouted, drawing all attention in the room to her, if for but a moment.

  It was enough, however, to unveil the Aureate Sword, held high, its presence unleashed in full, its power surging. Calling upon Anathema, she instantly negated pnar energy in an area around her, absorbing some of it as her own. With that, she directed it all to the ghostfmes floating around, first using Compress Spirit, then Spiritual Wave to emute Detonate Soul – a fifth realm skill she couldn’t quite use yet.

  The effects were sufficient, however. The ghostfmes erupted with all of their power, colliding with the walls and shaking the mountain. She could see some cracks form in the rock, the noise managing to overpower even the soul explosions. A few passageways couldn’t endure the pressure and crumbled, rocks falling in and sealing up the openings.

  “Are you trying to seal us in?” Han Rushu said as she dodged a stray falling stone.

  “No, this pce will be fine, but it will also rex the pressure on us!”

  As if sealing off a few of the several dozen passages wasn’t enough, the kitsune unleashed her Nocturnal Aegis shard, charging up to one of the weakened openings as she let the parts of the shield form up into a proper form. It could only hold that form for a brief moment before shattering, the numerous shards erupting into the walls of another passage and causing it to colpse.

  As skeletal minions rushed down one of the few openings left on that side, the kitsune chose that as her next target, summoning the Butcher’s Cleaver, the gigantic form of a cleaver appearing and slicing into the wall of the opening, forcing the narrow opening shut.

  ‘There… why didn’t the others think of that?’ Xue Yaling sighed, hurriedly raising a hand to her mouth as she coughed up blood, ‘Tch, of course this overwhelms me, but it should be fine…’

  With nearly half of the entrances sealed, to some extent at least, the majority of the threats would only come from one direction now. This left them with a far safer situation than before… at least in theory.

  ‘Bianca has no chance of controlling this whole array, and they’ve been keeping quiet about their pns. I can’t tell what they’re doing, but considering both of them are still there, they must have something in mind. As much as I don’t want to be venerating the demon as a Mistress, she’s our best chance to make it out of here,’ she quietly wiped the blood away and turned her attention to the part of the chamber that was still being flooded with the dead, ‘So, my dear Sect Mistress, do your best.’