Even with time being a precious and limited commodity in a battle, Sen couldn’t help but notice that his strike had been more effective than he could have hoped. From just below the elbow, the devil’s left arm was simply gone. It also appeared that the lingering energy of Heavens’ Rebuke wasn’t done quite yet. The stump seemed to be corroding. The energy eating away more and more of the flesh and bone as it worked its way up the arm. Sen expected that was what the devilish energy in the wound on his chest had meant to do something similar, only to find itself stymied by the divine qi in his skin. Sen couldn’t guess how long that corrosive effect would keep working on the powerful devil. Probably not long enough to actually kill it, thought Sen with a bit of disappointment. But the injury provided a much more immediate benefit.

The devil hadn’t changed weapons to something that would function better using one arm. While that didn’t mean the devil wouldn’t switch, it likely meant the spear was the weapon it was most comfortable with. A weapon that, as Uncle Kho had taught him, required the use of two arms to use properly. It wasn’t an absolute advantage by any measure. The devil was still hideously strong, but it was a strength that it couldn’t bring entirely to bear anymore. With that gap in strength between them a little narrower, Sen thought he might be able to bridge it with pure skill. He reignited Heavens’ Rebuke in the spear, having lost his grip on the technique in the wake of that blinding lance of pain in his head. The devil saw the hellish black and purple glow burst to life around the spear and faltered in its charge.

Sen lashed out with it, and the devil shied away from the spearhead that threatened to decapitate it. That moment of initiative was immediately lost. The devil might rightly fear the wrath of that technique, but it was still a competent warrior. It swept its own spear at Sen, who had to leap out of the way with a burst of his qinggong technique. What followed probably looked like some kind of dance to anyone watching from the outside as Sen and devil traded sweeping strikes that were narrowly avoided by man and devil alike. It would only take one serious blow landing and the fight would likely be over. Just as importantly, they both knew it. The problem was that the devil only needed to worry about himself, while Sen had to contend with anything from the horde that regained its senses or got too close. He was pressed harder and harder as the devil pushed him toward the heart of the milling, grinding mass of devilish beasts.

This isn’t going to work, realized Sen. In a one-on-one fight, maybe I could take him, but not like this. There are too many distractions. Even as he thought that, a random swipe from a beast that he hadn’t noticed opened up the back of his leg. He reacted on instinct, slamming the haft of the spear into the thing. It went insane as Heavens’ Rebuke ripped it apart. It had been nothing but a moment, a partial opening in his defense, but it was enough for the devil. All Sen could do was twist at the final moment to protect his heart. The devil’s spear punched through his chest. Sen could feel the devilish qi take root inside of him, trying to do to him what Heavens’ Rebuke had done to the devil’s arm. It was trying to unmake him. Between that and the venom, to say nothing of the wound itself, he could feel it as his body’s defenses started to crumble. It was too much, too fast. Without some kind of intervention to deal with at least one of those problems, he was a dead man.

Sen made a weak thrust at the devil. If they had just been using normal spears, it would have been pitiful and easily blocked. Of course, Sen wasn’t about to just hand this thing an easy victory. He finally used Heaven’s rebuke the way he’d made the technique to be used. He shot that awful energy right at the devil. He was a heartbeat too slow. The devil leapt away at the last second, dragging the spear out of Sen’s chest as it went and avoiding the technique. Not that it went entirely to waste. The technique had found an environment absolutely filled with things to kill and it drew a line of death ten feet wide through the horde. It would have been the perfect path to escape if escape was possible. Instead, Sen collapsed to a knee as each breath came with a cascade of pain. He had to move, to think, to do something.

The devil’s killing intent crashed down on Sen. It was like a seething ocean of blood and hatred that tried to invade his mind. Even for Sen, it took a second to shake that off. He looked up and saw the devil had jumped high up into the air and was going to bring that spear down on him. A mad idea took him then as he watched his death descending on him. Sen summoned another cracked core from his ring. The stormhawk core fell into his hand. He’d drained some of the strength from it in his advancement, but there was still some power left. Sen had spent a lot of time thinking about tribulations, about what they were. While he couldn’t manufacture a tribulation on his own, maybe he could make the next best thing to one.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Sen siphoned a thread of divine qi from that odd helix around his dantian and fed it into the core. He’d learned long ago that just a little bit of divine qi went a long way. The core began to glow and pulse in a truly threatening manner. Sen smiled up at the devil with bloody teeth, gathered his strength, and threw the core. The devil’s eyes went wide with panic as that core that glowed with divine light rose to meet its descending darkness. Sen wasn’t sure why the devil did what it did then. It slashed at the core. Where there had been disruption before, true chaos descended. A thunderstorm appeared out of thin air. Except, this storm wasn’t high in the sky. It was practically at ground level. And Sen had fed it divine qi. Lightning that wasn’t true tribulation lightning, but close enough to be a poor man’s substitute, started lancing down into the horde. Sen found out then that thunder was not something best experienced at a range of a few feet.

Every time one of those semi-divine bolts struck out at the horde or the ground, there was an explosion of noise that felt like Sen was getting kicked in the chest. He tried to find the devil but it was impossible. His spiritual sense was all but blinded by the horde and the storm. Beyond that, the clouds were so thick and so dark it was like night had fallen. Whatever power or compulsion that had kept the horde in place around the ruins seemed to break. The beasts and spirits scattered in every direction. I hope this chaos is enough for Glimmer of Night and Misty Peak to escape this insanity, thought Sen as something crashed into him and knocked him to the ground. The pain in his chest was getting worse by the second and staying conscious was starting to feel like the wrong choice. Sen felt a pang from his intuition and looked up to see something that could have passed for a wolf in the current darkness. It bared its fangs at him and surged forward.

Sen tried to cycle for something, but the pain that ravaged him was simply too much. He couldn’t even make himself move his qi, let alone find a pattern. He tried to push himself up to his feet, but couldn’t even manage that much. This is a lousy way to die, thought Sen with more than a little bitterness. There was a flash of darker darkness in the false night and a fist connected with the wolf’s head, which burst under the force of the blow. The figure reached down, picked up the rest of the thing’s body, and used it as a makeshift club to bat away anything else that got too close. When it had cleared a bit of space around them, it dropped what was left of the wolf, which wasn’t much, and came over to Sen. The figure crouched down. Sen found himself looking up at the face of Glimmer of Night. The spider tilted his head to one side.

“We should go now,” said the spider.

The spider’s tone was so calm and matter-of-fact that Sen found it both wildly inappropriate and oddly reassuring. With a heartbeat to think, Sen summoned a healing elixir from his storage ring and choked it down. With that task out of the way, he croaked out one painful word.

“Yeah.”

Misty Peak appeared from literally nowhere and gave Sen a concerned look. She turned to the spider.

“He’s too injured to move under his own power. Can you carry him?”

The spider looked from Misty Peak to Sen and shrugged. Then, in a display of brute strength that Sen found shocking, the spider used one arm to pick him up and put him over a shoulder. The world around them seemed to go watery in Sen’s vision, and he heard Misty Peak speaking.

“That way,” she said. “Run.”

Sen lost most of what happened after that in an ocean of pain as the spider ran, jostling Sen hard with every step. By the time anything like reason reasserted itself, they were back inside the galehouse and Sen had been placed on something soft. He forced his eyes open and found four people hovering around him. Misty Peak looked concerned. Laughing River stared at Sen with an unreadable expression. Li Yi Nuo looked like she’d taken a bad shock and couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Glimmer of Night looked, well, Sen might have said the spider looked bored, but the spider’s expressions were still a complete mystery to him. Sen was relieved to discover that the healing elixir had taken some of the worst edges off of the pain. Now, the pain was simply awful, rather than blinding. Yay, thought Sen. He looked from Misty Peak to Glimmer of Night.

“Thanks,” he wheezed.

The spider considered that for a moment before it just nodded. Misty Peak seemingly had things to say, because of course she had things to say.

“Oh, it was nothing,” she tossed off in a causal note before she glared at him. “You madman! Is that thing dead?”

Sen thought back. Had the devil died? He hadn’t seen it happen. He hadn’t seen a body. On the other hand, the devil would have gotten a face full of everything inside that core. If it wasn’t dead, Sen expected that it was probably wishing it was dead.

“Gods, I hope so,” Sen got out between clenched teeth.

“He needs rest,” said Laughing River. “Leave him be.”

“Two hours. Wake me up. Need to do more,” gasped Sen, gesturing at his chest.

Misty Peak looked like she had some thoughts about that, but Laughing River put a restraining hand on her arm. The old fox looked at Sen and nodded.

“I’ll see to it,” said Laughing River.

Sen closed his eyes and let himself fall into something that was almost sleep. He kept himself just awake enough to try to direct some of the divine qi in his body to his chest. Enough to stave off the devilish qi was still working very hard to kill him. It wasn’t rest, exactly, but it would have to do.