“There’s no question about it.” Poppy said.

  “There’s only one reasonable decision.” I agreed. “It is a significantly higher cultivation realm compared to anything else here. And the value of experience points seems to go up the higher realm the kill is.”

  “It’s directly tied to how strong the kill is. So we stalk it and finish the kill when its injured.”

  I cast my gaze towards where the spiritbeast king had howled from; it was definitely a Steel Gripped Screamer Monkey. And one in the Third Realm, at that.

  “It will be stronger than the beasts we’ve fought up to this point.” I said. I scratched my cheek where stubble was emerging after days inside of different scenarios. “But I have confidence we can kill it if its sufficiently weakened. If it isn’t… we can always just run.”

  “We should recover our full strength while we wait.” Poppy said. She didn’t sit, though. There were still intermittent waves of spiritbeasts passing us on the city’s streets.

  I steadied my breathing and began to refill my core. No matter how many times I reached out and sensed it, the feeling of jubilation — of being whole — didn’t leave me.

  It took another hour before the city was clear enough to move out.

  Tie grew restless.

  “We should rejoin with the main forces at the settlement.” He said.

  “Not yet. We would have to push our way through the monster horde to do that, anyway.” I replied. “We should find a better vantage point, though.”

  I pushed off of the wall, my hand not leaving my sword as I crossed into the open street. The horde of spiritbeasts trampling through the streets had torn the road apart. Dust and ash clung to my shoes as I led the way closer to the Heaven’s Crest Sect.

  Poppy and Tie remained quiet as we slowly and carefully picked our way through the street.

  We needn’t have bothered.

  The city had nothing left but corpses.

  We reached a multi-story inn, climbing to the roof to peer out over the city. The fight between the Heaven’s Crest sect and the spiritbeast horde hadn’t begin in earnest. But the milling crowd from around the city was gone, replaced by a stretched out formation of spear wielding cultivators. Banners fluttered in the wind.

  I had no idea what was going through their minds to wait this long to slay the beast king.

  The Young Master of Heaven’s Crest strode forth decked in full metal armor that gleamed in the odd rays of sunlight poking through smoke choked skies.

  It was an odd sight to see a cultivator in metal armor. Most of the time, the restriction on their movement wasn’t worth the defense provided, especially when their bodies were already as hard as metal.

  But the young master of Heaven’s Crest was not known for being brave. Many called him talented, yes, but who wouldn’t be called talented when they had the resources of an empire at their back?

  “The fields have burned completely.” An elder at the Young Master’s side said. Despite being eighty years old, the old man had only reached the same realm as the Young Master.

  “The harvest shouldn’t matter. The grain reserves will hold. We pressed most of the men into service at the wall, yes?” The young master glanced behind himself at the elder.

  The elder nodded reluctantly.

  “With that, the odds of any peasant rebellion uprising any further will have dropped. And with our populace so shrunken, we shouldn’t need this season’s harvest.”

  “As the young master says…” The elder reluctantly agreed. “However… the cost to the city is great. It will take generations to rebuild the city’s population and industry.”

  “We have other cities.” The young master replied callously. “And other serfs. But we rarely have opportunities to break through my cultivation bottleneck.”

  “As the young master says.” The elder said. He stroked his beard as he cast wizened eyes over the ruined city.

  “Sent forward the outer disciples first. The ones who survive will be worth keeping. We will reform the sect from the worthy.” The young master said. “The inner disciples can intercept the high value spiritbeasts wherever they appear. I will find and duel the beastking.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “As the young master wills it.”

  We circled around through the city; nearer to the center, outside the sect’s walls, the buildings became more grandoise. Wooden shacks gave way for elaborate manors and gardens.

  For all the expense spent on the buildings here, they didn’t survive the horde any better.

  We watched out of a three story building as the horde and cultivators clashed.

  They clearly didn’t send their best.

  “Why did they deploy their line so wide?” Poppy asked, staring out of the broken panes. “They’re standing so far apart the monsters are slipping past them.”

  “Any tighter would restrict the movement of a cultivator.” I replied. “They’re fighting like they’re fighting enemy cultivators and not a horde of monsters.”

  Even as we watched, a handful of cultivators were dying, surrounded by the spiritbeasts and dragged into an early grave. Especially the front line of cultivators. They sought out enemies as if this was a series of duels.

  The Heaven’s Crest had been neglectful in training their disciples, and they were heavily outnumbered by the spiritbeast horde. Still, the farther back line of cultivators were cutting down monsters by the dozen. I knew the worst was yet to come, though. Even without using [Appraisal] I recognized the first wave of beasts were almost entirely in the first realm.

  Tie shifted uncomfortably behind us.

  “We should be out there helping.”

  “Tie.” I said. Then I pointed out the window at the front most line of cultivators. “What does the color of their robes signify? Its the same as yours, right?

  I turned back to him.

  Tie’s robes were mostly white, with a stripe of green along them. The same as the entire wave of cultivators dying by the dozen.

  “These are the robes of an outer disciple.” He replied plainly.

  I turned back to the fight.

  “They’re sacrificing the outer disciples to let the inner disciples have more opportunities to fight.” I replied. “That’s where you would be, isn’t it? Sacrificed?”

  “Yes… but…”

  “But its virtuous to die for the clan, yes? What virtues does the Heaven’s Crest hold? Look around you. Their virtue saw this city burned. Its people culled by the hundreds, dying isolated in a crowd outside of its walls.”

  I turned and strode toward him.

  “Is this a virtue you would die for?”

  Tie hesitated. He opened his mouth before closing it. Then, his face hardened with conviction.

  “Yes.” He said.

  I sighed, turning back out the window.

  Poppy looked between the two of us.

  “It takes more than a day to break a lifetime of programming.” I said, watching as the battle progressed.

  The line of Outer Disciples thinned, but the sect took the lives of a dozen spiritbeasts for every life they lost.

  Gradually, the horde was thinning. The battle still felt like it dragged for ages. When the line of cultivators had thinned too much, the outer disciples were recalled. The inner disciples held the line much better, even pushing the wave of beasts back.

  Then the formation of inner disciples opened, and the sect’s elders and elites plunged into the heart of the spiritbeast horde.

  If the inner disciples were able to strike down the spiritbeasts with ease, then the elders cut them down like wheat. Like the point of a spear, a formation of only a dozen drove directly into the lines of monsters. Fresh inner disciples pushed forward, weaving through the wide spread lnies of outer disciples and joining in carving their way through.

  There was a howl from the center of the spiritbeast horde. The formation stopped its advance as the monster beast horde spread out like spilling water. They trampled each other, battering each other aside as the horde diffused. The formation of cultivators continued on, carving them to pieces.

  The spiritbeast king became obvious a moment later, emerging from the center of the formation to charge at the approaching formation of cultivators. It was a Screamer Monkey, and it was several heads taller than even the largest I had seen. Its fur was a bright silver with a corona of glowing white surrounding it.

  [Appraisal] failed due to the distance between us. But I recognized the glowing power surrounding it.

  It was uncontrolled aura, a sure sign of progress into the Third Realm. Qi was manifesting around it, leaking from the monster in such quantity and turbulent quality that it became visible.

  The monster hadn’t just formed a core; that was only the first step necessary to advance into the Third Realm. It had gone a step further. Whether it had progressed before rampaging through the city or after plundering it, it had made progress beyond just a Third Realm cultivator.

  The monsters scattered or were smacked out of its way as the beast king charged into the formation of cultivators. It threw up an arm, revealing a sharpened piece of black metal surrounded by the same violent white corona around the beast king.

  My eyes widened when it brought the attack down. I was unsure if the cultivators would survive a blow from it. The sheer force and violence sent up a shockwave of dirt. But a moment later, the young cultivator heading the formation was revealed beneath the spreading shockwave. His blade blocked the monkey’s mockery of a sword.

  Then his own aura rippled out, a glowing wave of golden plasma burning in a crescent that crossed dozens of feet in half a second. The monkey slid backward a dozen feet, the golden arc of qi meeting its aura and grinding away. The silver aura raging around the spiritbeast rapidly diminished.

  But the two sides of the golden arc continued on, carving aprat the monster horde, slaughtering dozens of beasts.

  I hadn’t expected the cultivators of Heaven’s Crest to be powerful enough to push the spiritbeast horde back.

  The screamer monkey howled. The horde shifted.

  There was no thought or order when the monster horde charged forward this time. It was just pure animalistic rage.

  “We need to get closer.” I said. “While they’re fighting. Let’s get in position to finish the kill.”

  “We’re going to get closer to that?” Poppy asked.

  “We should join in the fight. For the Young Master.” Tie said.

  “We don’t want to give a chance to heal. Or to… consume its kill and progress its cultivation even further.”

  I turned to the door.

  “Wait.” Poppy said. “You can do that? Eat… something… and get more powerful?”

  “I can’t do that.” I said. “Spiritbeasts can. There’s rumors and historical record of demonic sects with similar powers, but I’ve never encountered any. They’ve all been wiped out by the… well, it doesn’t matter. We need to move.”

  I was already jogging down the stairs.