Sky Pride

“Yes, it is fortunate they are coming, as we would need to grab a few otherwise.” Heavenly Demon nodded. Tian and Liren gave him matching looks. He rolled his eyes. “A senior failed his ascension and as a result he shattered the geomantic energy in the reason, flattened a mountain range, dried up several river systems and perverted the natural energy over almost a sixteenth of the entire Northern Expanse. A region now known as the Wasteland of Song. His seclusion grounds were in a hidden realm. The fabric of space was already distorted in this place. How much worse must that spatial distortion be after such a cataclysm? Naturally we need disposable tools to test the path for us, lest we stumble at the final step.”

Tian felt a bit queasy at the thought. Killing a heretic was one thing, but using them for experimentation? He went back and forth for a moment, and eventually just sighed. If they wanted to throw themselves in on their own initiative, let them. Was he supposed to save them from suicide by killing them?

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“Alright. Just this once, I’ll let you ride on my back. Just this one time, mind you.” Burning Heaven grumbled.

Heavenly Demon opened his mouth, and caught three sets of side eye simultaneously. He opted for “Thank you. No time like the present. Let us be off.”

It always felt a little odd to be sitting on Burning Heaven when she changed sizes. Heavenly Demon jumped on with an easy leap, dismissing his tiger mount at the same time. Burning Heaven circled once to build momentum, then drove hard for the opening. She wasn’t subtle. All the ambushers waiting to pick off those coming to raid the hidden realm perked up, waiting for their chance. Liren meditated, her breath steady as a golden glow rose up around the cultivators.

The shimmering haze touched the golden glow, and stabilized.

“What? How?”

“Damn! Get them!”

“HAHAHA! MAKE WAY FOR THIS DADDY!”

Shouts rose up from the camping heretics, and those willing to consort with them. The ambushers didn’t talk any nonsense, they dove at Burning Heaven with vicious speed, some burning talismans or using light body techniques to be the first through the stable portal.

“Never be in the vanguard in the Redstone Wastes. There’s a lesson I remember from my childhood.” Tian’s voice was heavy, they were a half step behind the leading element and the results were already visible. Inside the golden aura of Liren’s qi, the passage was turbulent, but only turbulent. Outside of it was horror.

It was only a few brief seconds, suspended between the outer world and the hidden realm, but in those seconds he saw men and women pulled into strands and braided, others ground into paste, while yet more were scattered in myriad particles, or condensed into a single speck of dust. He had to close his eyes, not just from the horror - the unnatural distortions sent stabbing pain from his eyes deep into his brain. His stomach, previously placid, was whipped into convulsions and only extreme bodily control kept him from vomiting into the interstitial space.

“Huh, not bad at all. This Demon wonders what happened to the test animals. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter.”

“Yeah, a bit of shaking, and I thought maybe I heard some screaming?”

“A bit of screaming, yeah Sis. Hey, Sis, what’s wrong with Bro?” Burning Heaven asked. Tian was on his knees, head pressed to the ground and hands clenched over the back of his head. He took convulsive breaths, each too short to properly fill his lungs.

“Zihao!”

It took Tian a few minutes to compose himself. Not because he was composed, he wasn’t at all. The air was corrosive and stabbing him at the same time. It encouraged repressing emotion in favor of saving your little life.

“I’ll tell you what I saw later. Everyone else is dead, and if not dead, then all I can say is I have finally found a horror I would not wish on even a heretic. Let’s head into the chamber… What…” Tian’s voice trailed off.