This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

The revenant leaned back, dodging the sword I'd sent rocketing toward it by a hair. Empty eye sockets tracked me as I approached, sword held low.

The dozen feet between us disappeared in two heartbeats, as I ran as fast as I could without pushing myself airborne. That was all the time it took for the ghost clinging to its back to fully materialize. Its eyes were the same red as the tainted light, but the rest of it was colorless. Arms of glass-like distortion held tenderly to the cultivator's skeleton, clinging to it like a child to its mother's back.

Qi poured out from it, pressing back against the influence of my own aura. I felt my connection to the sword I'd launch cut off, its obstructing influence greatly reducing the range of my control. As its power pressed against mine, I felt something familiar. The weighty sense of realness that I associated with other nascent soul cultivators, like Elder Shi and Elder Xin. My eyes widened, as I realized that the spirit atop its back had to be the very nascent soul the stage had been named for.

Then we closed once more to melee range, and there was no more time for thought. I led with my sword, throwing out quick slashes with my arm at full extension. The revenant circled around me, managing the range between us with the skill of a proper martial artist. It was as fast as me. Likely near as strong. Despite its appearance, its footwork was excellent. Better than mine by such a large margin I couldn't judge it.

I chased as it retreated, watching as its legs dipped and swung in well practiced motions. Its skeletal arms were held close, one always chambered for a punch or palm strike.

I swung for its extremities. It danced back, then threw a kick at my head I dropped to my knees to avoid.

It charged, a punch aimed for my head. The air whistled in its wake from the sheer speed and violence of it. I swung for the elbow, and the skeleton twisted on the spot, its back leg whipping out like Meng Daiyu's rope dart.

I gritted my teeth and charged. The heel-bone struck me across the jaw with enough force to shatter stone. The world narrowed, as I focused on nothing except the angle of my sword, ensuring it pierced the revenant, and not me.

The dead cultivator twisted with inhuman grace, but the target was too big, too close.

The nascent soul roared. I flinched, as I heard, felt, its pain and anguish with something deeper than ears. Blind anguish and a hunger that could never be satisfied. A dirge for all the world, a moment of desperate hate stretched into eternity.

A skeletal palm crashed into my stomach, bone striking flesh with a noise like a gunshot. Blood beaded where its fingers pierced the skin of my stomach.

I moved to gut it back, but fingers as unyielding as iron caught my sword hand by the wrist. Its other hand reached out for my throat. I caught it with my left hand, pushing back trying to pin the hand against its chest.

I found myself face to face with the spirit riding atop its back. Our eyes locked. I found myself searching for any hint of intelligence in those glowing red lights it had in place of eyes.

Then the nascent soul reached out with one hand, and clawed at my eyes. Visually, its fingers had all the substance of a heat haze, but that didn't stop its nails from cutting right through my skin. It missed my eyes by inches, slicing deep into my forehead. Blood poured freely. Forehead wounds were always bleeders.

"Motherfucker!" The curse just slipped out.

I ducked my head, closing my eyes on reflex. Pressing it close to the revenant's chest kept the ghost's hands farther from my eyes. I couldn't get an angle to stab the damn thing. It pulled my sword down and to the side, and I let it. I stepped in as it did, forcing it to awkwardly bend the arm I gripped.

I let go, dropping my free hand low. My ring was on my left hand. I materialized a dagger. With its right arm trapped between my chest and its ribs, it wasn't fast enough to catch me before I jammed the steel well into its ribcage.

My blade cut effortlessly through bone, but my arm could only press so far. I tried to draw back, stabbing had been the wrong move, there was nothing vital to hit, I needed to slice a limb off.

Without warning, another thunderclap threw me back. It felt like the air had become water, a wave of pressure that sent me tumbling like a child bowled over by a wave. It didn't hurt, it was nothing compared to the revenant's claws, but it took a single second for me to stand again. An eternity in a fight like this.

I charged again, but I was too slow. The revenant leapt, becoming airborne. My knife was still embedded up to the hilt in its side, jammed into the desiccated remains of its organs.

I could feel it now, track its motions without looking. At least I'd gotten something out of that exchange.

I leapt, feeling droplets of blood fly off my face from the sheer speed of the jump. A second sword leapt to my hand as I gave chase.

Had I bitten off more than I could chew? No. No, it didn't matter. I had to win. I had the fundamental advantage of a sword cultivator, a peerless offense. I just needed one true hit.

Clutching at my weapons like the reins of an invisible dragon, I chased the revenant. My flight was awkward, my method crude, compared to however proper sword cultivators flew. But if nothing else, it was fast. I closed in a moment, but the revenant jerked to the side as I reached it. My momentum carried me far past it, but when I came around for another pass, swords wide, it dropped down instead. In the moment it took me to reorient myself to an enemy beneath me, something hit me.

Where the last wave of pressure had been diffuse, like a wave, this one was a power washer tight jet the size of a golf ball. It hit me across the chest, sending me into a wild spin even as it gouged a chunk off my torso the size of a child's fist. My vision flashed white, ears ringing dully. I lost my second sword at some point.

As my flight stabilized, I looked up, and saw the revenant chambering a punch. The air shuddered around it. My sword traced a long-practiced pattern, a two handed thrust.

"Stormbreaker." I murmured through bloody lips. It just felt right, to say the name.

My storm met the revenant's shockwave with an unearthly howl. The air screamed like metal being torn apart. The sheer force of our clashing blows flattened the compound a hundred feet beneath us, kicking up the accumulated dust of centuries. It rose up around us in a great bowl.

As I watched, panting, the revenant let itself dip lower. It descended into the dust storm, drawing back its qi. I followed suit. I didn't know how intelligent this thing was. Its skilled movements and tactical planning were a sharp contrast with its wild, wordless, violence. It was almost like whoever they were in life had been hollowed out, leaving only martial skill and raw hatred.

But it had made another mistake, and I wouldn't waste this one. I didn't need visibility. I knew where my dagger was.

I slowly turned. My qi expanded, as if I were relying on my spiritual sense itself for detection. It could fly without using its aura I noted. I needed to learn how to do that, my current technique had no stealthy equivalent.

Slowly, I drifted directly over the floating mountain. If this worked, I didn't want to end up falling forever.

The revenant accelerated, coming from my back-left. Closer. Faster.

With half a second to go, I dropped. Another tight lance of pressure screamed through the space I'd occupied a moment ago.

The revenant was dodging the moment I charged, rising out of range of my sword.

"Mistake." I hissed.

I ripped at my aura, pulling it towards me as violently as I could. For a fraction of a second, I lost all awareness of my surroundings, blind in the dust cloud. Then my fingers caught the edge of a robe, and pulled myself in, burying my sword in the revenant's chest.

Its nascent soul screamed again, but I held on desperately as we fell together.

Deep in its body, my influence over the dagger buried in its chest was weak. But in the air, there was little to brace against, and the revenant had released its aura to hide itself. All I'd needed was to pull hard enough to foul its dodge.

The nascent soul clawed at my back as we grappled, twisting through the air. Its glassy fingers dug deep furrows, tearing my robe to shreds. The revenant whipped back and forth beneath my grip, moving almost bonelessly despite being made of nothing but. My legs locked around it, cinching tight against its back. My knees clenched tight against its ribcage, its exposed spine too thin to really get hold of. Both its hands grabbed my right, trying to prevent me from finishing the cut.

It blasted out the same wave of pressure, but with my legs locked around it, my free hand in a death-grip on its shoulder, it wasn't enough to send me flying.

I released my aura again, using my sword to drag us downward, overpowering its flight technique.

The two of us landed in the remains of the revenant's compound with a heavy crash. The force of the impact was nothing to us, compared to the blows we dealt each other.

My sword rose slowly, even as the force my aura exerted upon it kept us pinned to the mountain. Half a dozen forces competed to move it, my arms and the revenants, its flight technique pulling up and my aura pushing down. It shuddered violently as I negotiated the bizarre physics problem to bring it into position.

The nascent soul wailed, but I was ready for it this time. its song of rage and loss passed over me like water. Arms of bone and spirit alike pressed back against my forearms, struggling desperately to keep my blade from descending. Four arms joined against two.

I smiled cruelly. Without its tricks, without any flesh, it simply wasn't strong enough. I didn't know what had created this wretched thing, but my head ached from its cries and blood slowly seeped from a dozen small wounds across my torso. My qi channels felt scraped raw, and I could almost feel my core, pressing against my heart like a dagger. Running so low, wounds I would normally shrug off felt more real.

I enjoyed watching my sword slowly descend. It pressed against the nascent soul. For a moment, its skin held, stretching like rubber. I fed more and more qi into my sword. The blade's edge grew starker, sharper. I pressed down with more than mere muscle, putting everything behind the blade. Waves rippled through the manifest soul's glassy substance where my blade met it, visible only as patterns of opalescent light. It screamed, fear for once overtaking raise in its strange voice. Then the skin broke, and with a quiet pop, it dissipated.

The revenant fell still, a corpse once more.

Twice, I stabbed and then dragged. Split the skull in two, then the upper half of the torso on the other side. Zombie rules. With one more swipe, I removed its right hand, where the three storage rings rested. Gingerly, I placed it in a pocket. The upper half of my robe was torn to shreds, but I still had some pockets on the lower half. I wasn't sure what would happen if I put a storage ring inside another, but I'd played enough Dungeons and Dragons I wasn't about to experiment.

Exhausted, I rolled off the corpse onto my back.

Four figures floated above me. Two in white, two in black. It took me a moment to remember, that one of the Glass Flower elders wore black.

Never a moment's rest. Game face on.

I slowly sat up, and smiled madly for my audience. Wide leering lips, exposed teeth. There was blood on my face, where the nascent soul had clawed at an eye. I stuck my tongue out, feeling for the rivulet. Tasted like blood. Some things were the same no matter what world you lived in.

"Finally. A fight worth drawing my sword for." I said. I projected my voice just enough that the inner disciple probably strained to hear it. It echoed subtly, in the vast emptiness of the dead sect.

I let the words hang in the air, staring at the three figures in white. The two elders, and the inner disciple who had met us at the gate.

"Are you going to give me another?"

My question hung in the air for a long moment, before the three figures in white fled. A few seconds later, Meng Daiyu left as well. I wondered how long they'd watched.

I waited several minutes, before collapsing onto my back again. Everything hurt. My shoulders felt like they'd been dislocated and then popped back in several times, those high speed dodges pushed them to their limits. I considered a healing pill. Elder Hu's ring had contained three that seemed to be of an appropriate level. Possessing that strange sense of weight and reality I associated with nascent soul level artifacts and cultivation.

In the end, I opted against it. This wasn't half bad enough to waste a limit resource. I simply lay there among the ruins for an hour, letting my core slowly refill my channels, and staunch my bleeding.

The entire surface of the mountain was a wreck. Several of the other corpses had animated. I stumbled across most of them trapped within the ruined ruins, pinned down by a fallen beam or wall. Pinned or not, a single swing of Elder Hu's sword ended them.

I wasn't sure how to feel. I had plenty of time to ruminate on it, as I slowly turned over the ruins of the complex. I'd taken down something in the same realm as me. But I couldn't help but tally up all the places I'd gotten lucky in my head. The two opportunities for an easy kill I'd squandered. The fact that it turned out to be weaker than me, either because of its undead state, or simply by being somewhere earlier in the nascent soul stage. I should have scouted the entire place first, if there had been a second revenant on this level, I would have had no chance.

I shook my head. I'd killed it. Or, put it to rest. I had healing pills and allies, it didn't. I'd gotten lucky with its realm, but I wouldn't get better at aerial mobility, or higher realm melee combat, without actually doing it. I couldn't plan for every eventuality.

But as the dust settled around me, I was alive, and it wasn't. That was a victory.

It was just that wandering alone through the shattered remains of a dead sect, feeling the formless hatred of the dead whose graves we were robbing, it was hard to celebrate.

It took hours to find the bowl of white jade I'd done all this for. After my qi recovered, I'd felt its presence with my spiritual sense. Even from a distance, it felt like the great formation. The same sort of blend of lunar and spatial qi, with undertones I couldn't place. Unfortunately it had been on the second of four floors, and swords were not ideal implements for digging.

The work was slow and boring and I would have taken days of it over another fight like that.

When I finally got my hands on the artifact, I took a risk and threw it into my storage ring, despite the undertones of spatial qi it emanated. If it controlled the formation, or let me contact the Ghost Immortal, it was worth the risk.

My ring didn't explode, so that was nice.

That was enough exploration for one day. I didn't like my chances trying random buildings at anything less than full strength. It was time to see if this bowl was what I hoped it was.