Lei looked at the iron mantis. It slowly trudged towards the group but it would take it ages to reach them at its rate. Its front pincer was broken, a half of it was dangling from the ankle, the joint almost melted away. Its front leg was also bent, and its head was twisted to the side, as if it was looking at him in curiosity. Was its neck broken?
The creature walked a few more steps, then slowed down and dropped on the ground. The melting glow of the Lava Spit and the fire essence almost faded now, leaving ugly burnt dents in their place.
Whatever.
"Everyone, retreat into the tunnels!" He ordered. He scanned the battlefield, and saw the bugs act a bit confused and scattered. It didn't stop the fighting completely, but it allowed everyone to retreat into the smaller tunnel, the one where he found the Vermillion bird's feather.
Tu Qiang valiantly protected their retreat, and was the last person to enter the tunnels.
Everyone was breathing heavily, and only Rui Ming was uninjured.
"Everyone, report..." Lei sighed out. It's almost over. He felt like fainting.
"Out of qi, no serious wounds." Rui Ming said calmly.
"I am fucked up. Think a blood stopping pill should be enough, though." Murong Zhan said as he consumed the medicine.
"Same." Yao Nang responded. She was covered in a mix of red and greenish blood, and still held Xin's glaive with its tip melted off, using it like a small quarterstaff.
"Out of qi. Meridian damage. Minor wounds." Wu Xiaoyun reported.
"Ugh." Xin took a thorn out of his shoulder, then splashed it with blood-stopping powder. He then took a mix of blood stopping and pain killing pills, and consumed a blood restoring pill on top. This burnt his meridians, but he was willing to endure it, as he wasn't breaking through any time soon. "The scars will look cool, I guess. Master Taowei is dead, right?"
"Right." Lei answered. "Tu Qiang, you?"
"A stage two grasshopper stabbed my hip. I've stopped the bleeding with medicine, but there's meridian damage. Who's in charge now?"
"Are you stupid? You are in charge now." Xin said, still moaning from pain.
"Me? Fine. What's with the mantis?"
"It's severely injured, I don't know if it's dead or comatose." It was painful for Lei to speak, but he ignored this.
"Can someone reload my crossbow?" Xin asked.
"My arm's gone again. Anyone?" Lei scratched his temple.
"Fine." Yao Nang said. "I'll do it." She grabbed his crossbow, and effortlessly reloaded it in no time, despite being injured. Xin was astonished, he wished he could reload so fast.
Xin picked his weapon up and went towards the tunnel exit.
"Brother Xin, maybe you should wait for them to leave?" Wu Xiaoyun said.
"Hush." He raised his finger. "They are fighting each other."
Two minutes later, the few grasshoppers that were left banded together and finished off the mantises. Some stage two grasshopper even approached the comatose iron mantis and tried stabbing its abdomen. It found it too tough and lost interest. Xin shot its chest, and it ran towards their tunnel, desperate to retaliate.
Yao Nang reloaded his crossbow, and he shot it again.
A few minutes later, all the bugs were gone. A few of them scattered and ran away, but most perished. None of the creatures made it into their tunnel. A few tried to squeeze in, but it exposed their head to Xin's crossbow, and they were easily dispatched.
"Can anyone run? It's urgent." Xin said after dispatching the bugs.
"I can." Rui Ming said. "What do you need, brother?"
"Please run into the cave where Lei broke through. I marked the stones with pointing arrows, it won't be hard to find it. Lei will tell you how to get there. "Use this flask and your knife to cut some fire crystals off, then bring them here. I need them."
"Right!" Rui Ming nodded, took the flask with wood element materials and quickly ran away.
"What do you want him to do?" Lei seemed confused.
"We are dismembering the iron mantis. We'll bring it back to the sect."
"What?" Everyone was astonished.
"Can someone give me a blade? My stuff is gone."
"Here." Murong Zhan handed him a chakram. "Don't worry, I'll sharpen it with qi later."
"Sure." Xin stepped out of the tunnel. Lei followed him. "Please wait here, guys. I'll soon return to apply more bandages, but what I want to do is quite urgent." People nodded, what a weird request.
Xin approached the dead yaoguai. His chitin carapace and scythes dried up, as the qi source that kept them intact was gone. Xin easily cracked them with his arms and stripped the enemy master naked.
"He looks like a teenage boy again. How old was he?" Lei asked. "Fifteen?"
"I'd say one hundred fifteen is more likely. Still, he was powerful, but clearly lacked cultivation depth."
"Right, his swarm management sucked. He was injured and killed by two rank ones and a mortal, we didn't even attack him simultaneously." Lei raised the yaoguai's arm where Rui Ming stabbed him. There was a massive hole under his armpit. "I'd also say his martial arts were mediocre, his reflexes were sharp, and his martial spirit was good, but he lacked fundamentals."
"Well, such is the fate of a demonic cultivator. Knowledge, resources — everything is chaotic, you work with what you have. It's righteous cultivators that go rogue that I fear. Still, this guy got master Taowei killed... And it's my fault."
"What are you saying? You were brilliant." Lei raised his eyebrow.
"I... I understood his battleplan. He didn't move inside, as he waited for me to unload my crossbow. This means that if I just didn't shoot, and waited for him, I could keep him out of combat for, say, ten more seconds. This would effectively mean that a mortal cultivator took a rank two cultivator out of combat for ten seconds. This could change the tide of battle, but I didn't use this opportunity. Now everyone's injured, and master Taowei's dead."
"Are you retarded? He'd just manage his swarm better, you made him join the fight. Blunders happen, but it wasn't one! Whatever, as long as you do your best, genuinely, you can't be blamed."
"This fight was too chaotic, nothing went to plan, I failed to adjust and to communicate. As a strategist, I failed."
"You killed a rank two master with your own arms! You'll be a legend in our sect, don't you dare insult my best friend's achievements!"
Xin sighed, and smiled through pain.
"Shit, I think the pills won't be enough. Someone will have to stitch me together later." Xin could feel that the protective layer of his wounds that the powder formed wasn't thick enough.
"Fine, let's go back into the tunnel."
"Wait."
Xin picked up the chakram and started cutting the yaoguai's organs out.
Liver. Good. Heart. Great. The eyes, the tongue. The spleen. He sliced him up like a butcher working a pig, not a human. But Xin knew the value of these items. He procured a bunch of conservatives and mixed them with water, then hid the organs into a jar that he took out of his bag of holding. In this same jar, he also collected the master's blood.
"That was disgusting." Lei said.
"He was disgusting. He should be glad he isn't alive for this."
Lei nodded.
"Xin, are you alright?" - Rui Ming emerged from the tunnels. He held a crystal in each hand.
"How did you return so fast?" Xin asked.
"I don't know... I just ran and balanced the crystals."
"Whatever. Thanks. Give them to me." Xin stood up and approached the iron mantis.
"What's your plan exactly?"
"It's big, but it's because it spreads its limbs. It fit into the rank two master's aperture, although it was probably an aperture expanding technique. I want to test something. Lei, give me master Taowei's bag of holding, please."
"Fine." Lei approached the dead master. His face was twisted in agony. His heroic last move was saving his disciples, making sure that the iron mantis is defeated. He went out beautifully, but did he realise it? His facial expression wasn't exactly theatric.
"Sorry, master, I am borrowing this." He took a bag of holding out of his robe's pocket. He then approached Xin. "Here."
"Thanks. Let's try this."
Xin put the organ jar on the ground, then spilled half of the crystal's liquid essence at one of mantis's limbs. He then spilled some yaoguai blood on top.
Hiss. Potent mantis yaoguai blood was a perfect wood path material to reinforce the fire essence. A minute later, it ate through the limb, and Xin tore it off.
"Four more to go." Xin carefully examined the mantis. "It's catatonic, and it sustained severe meridian damage. It doesn't bleed or receive further damage in this state, so we can just stash it in the bag of holding. Master Taowei's bag is rank two, and holds more space than Lei's."
"Aren't we supposed to use it for the delivery?" Rui Ming asked.
"We'll figure something out in Zadana. Until then, we can utilise this bag for something."
"We could also use this bag to carry master Taowei's and Su Xing's bodies home to be buried?" Rui Ming scratched his temple.
"Nah." Xin waved his finger. "We'll bury them here. We'll make a stone tomb. The sect can retrieve them later. I am not giving up a rare rank two beast that could boost the sect right when the war is about to erupt."
"Think our sect can repair and tame it?" Lei asked.
"Well, that or the sect will just use it for materials. It's a valuable thing. You realise how good the materials it emerged from are? The mantis is a wood path creature, it grew into a creature of an opposite element. It required some exquisite cultivation, no matter if it was natural or manmade.
Xin frowned. He couldn't retrieve dao shards that were inside of this beast (If there were any), as they had no instruments to cut through this creature. Its catatonic body would also preserve them slightly, and he wasn't sure he'd manage to keep the shards alive outside of the mantis. In this regard, the mantis was the dao shards' life support, and it was their best chance of preserving them.
They tied the cut off limbs together with a rope, and made Rui Ming carry them, as he was the least injured.
"I'll use one of the pincers as a chopper." He proclaimed.
"What? That's not a practical weapon." Xin rolled his eyes, but also appreciated the creative idea.
"The rank two material will compensate for this. Of course, it's hard to fence with something as unwieldy and unbalanced, but whatever. It's better than my current blade." He pointed at the stumped sword on his sheath.
"Yao Nang! Please loot master Taowei's mallet! You need a weapon!" Xin called out to her. "Please bury him and Su Xing deeper into the tunnels, away from the predators. There are plenty of stones around."
"Sure, Xin!" She responded in an eager, but a serious voice. She had complete trust in him after this fight.
"Damn, man, I thought I was about to upset Tu Qiang, but it seems your chances aren't that bad, huh?" Lei teased him.
"I told you a hundred times I am not interested. Fuck, Su Xing..." Xin stumbled on his body as he worked.
"He should have died instead of doing what he did, he only has himself to blame." Lei cut off.
"And what would you do?" Xin asked.
"It would be hard, and it would be scary — but I'd choose to die."
"I think I'd die, too. I couldn't live after trying to kill my friends, anyway."
"Forget about him. He's lucky I didn't spit on his corpse."
"Now that we're done with the urgent stuff, let me get back to the yaoguai again." Xin still wanted to harvest the yaoguai's core.
Alright, let's get it open. Xin rubbed a condensed green ball in his abdomen that he left intact during the dismemberment.
It was a wood path, Condensation stage core — an alchemical organ that was the foundation of xiandao master's power.
It wouldn't die and wither until several days had passed, and Xin knew how to open it. His father once told him, and he read it in the books.
"Hey, I always wondered, how do you open the aperture?"
"There is a rough method, and a gentle method. I'll show you the gentle one." Xin soaked his pointing finger in yaogai's blood, then infused it with wood path qi. Luckily, it was one of the elements he could manifest. He then gently cut at the core with his fingernail. It slowly opened the aperture.
He then rubbed the core, and the aperture opened even wider. He took the core out of the yaogai's body and twisted it inside out.
"Quickly, step back." He warned Lei and Rui Ming.
A lot of wood path qi manifested in the air, and a green liquid soaked out of the core. Then, the grass and greenery spread around the floor, with yaogai's belongings laid out on top.
"Neat! I'll remember this trick, hehe." Lei quickly scanned the loot. "Oh, there are some larvae here. Oh, and some jade. Spirit stones... Fifteen. A dao shard!" He lifted a dao shard, that looked like a tree thorn spike, in the air. "The hieroglyph on it says 'thorn launch'."
"It's that thing that hit me in the shoulder. I know how to feed it. Give it to Wu Xiaoyun. It's rank one, so it shouldn't be too hard to use."
"Huh? Why won't you use it?"
"I've got a crossbow, she has no attacking method. Our total value is higher if she uses it. And my wood qi control is subpar until I remove the conflict through the breakthrough."
"Damn, I hoped you'd say 'I am trying to woo her'."
"You should have let me die."
"That would be too boring." Lei grinned again.