“What
in the name of the mother is going on right now? What is that incessant
siren, and what do you mean? Who’s back?” Laurence looked around at the
frantically moving people as the alarms went off. They were like a
panicked hive of bees, flitting around and trying to do a thousand
little things at once. There was fear in the air, as well as a palpable
sense of anger.
“This siren is the invasion alarm,” Piao replied.
“It notifies the town when there is a large body of people marching
towards us, and it always saddens me to say this, but this is not the
first time that it’s happened. Have you ever thought about the nine Book
clans, and the four godbeast clans?”
“I have on occasion thought about the clans, why?” Laurence cocked his head as he looked at Piao confusedly.
“Well
people often talk about the thirteen greatest clans, but they often
forget about the other clans, and the cults that populate the tower.
Tens of thousands of cults and clans, families and sects, even churches
and schools populate the worlds that we climb through to reach the apex.
All of them want more power, and a new up and coming group like ours
with the attraction of the Book of Creation, it makes us seem like we’re
an incredibly juicy target. We haven’t had the time to set up enough
defenses to make us impregnable, nor have we had enough of a chance to
make alliances to make us untouchable”.
“This isn’t an uncommon
thing is it?” Running his fingers through his scraggly beard, Laurence
looked at the clouds on the skyline pensively. “How often do they come?
How many come when they do?”
“It’s hard to say how many, usually a
few thousand Saints, a couple of hundred Heaven rankers and an
Immortal, but the number varies from time to time. As for when it
happens, usually every two or three years. It’s become almost a coming
of age ritual for the small clans within the tower”. Piao looked at the
cloud coming towards Misty Peaks and spat. “I hate them, it’s like they
think that any amount of life is worth getting hold of the Books”.
“To
them, it is. The books are something special. They allow your
cultivation to progress at a rate thousands of times quicker than the
norm, because of the connection to the truths that they contain and the
comprehensive instructions within. Think about it - the majority of
people, even if they climb the tower from say... their early twenties,
it would still take until they are thirty or forty to reach Sainthood.
To reach Heaven rank, something that we reach in our twenties on
average, it is rare if you find anyone younger than sixty. This even
includes people who have more craft oriented skills like any facet of
Creation, Life, or Death, who start their training as young as we begin
ours. You would still be hard pressed to find anyone in their mid
twenties who can compete with one of our seven year old Saints”.
“Well,
when you put it like that... It still doesn’t explain why they would be
so willing to sacrifice their talent in such a great way”.
“That
is something that is slightly more questionable. It’s something that
even the great clans do, and that’s put our young through a crucible.
Not all of them survive, in fact far too few survive for my liking, but
the ones that do are cultivators of extreme strength in comparison to
those who just lived their lives in the comfort of the homelands. It
skews us, and makes us a little odd... In my case maybe a little more
than little. Either way, my point is that through the hell that we put
our children through, they become strong from it. They probably think
that anyone who can survive this is worthy of being a Saint”.
“What a waste of life,” Piao sighed. “It doesn’t make me like them though. They should stay away from what isn’t theirs”.
As
the three of them sat on the street and looked out at the plains below,
Yun ran towards them. “Brother, I hate to ask but I have a request for
you”.
“Something you can’t do?”
“I need a weapon. None of
our Heaven rankers are even close to having your understanding of
weapons and combat. I need something that will scare the minor clans
from ever trying to set foot near here again without permission”.
“What kind of materials do you want me to make it out of? Do you have any ideas for the weapon you want?”
“I’ll give you access to the clan vault, otherwise I don’t care. Just make it strong”.
A
sick grin spread across Laurence’s face as he looked at the town he was
in. He glanced at the top of the missing mountain before looking
towards the approaching army. Measurements of various things in his
surroundings sprung into Laurence’s head as his truesense seemed to go
insane, scanning over everything in his surroundings. He began pacing up
and down, muttering to himself and counting his fingers before he
finally turned back to his brother.
“Do you have any idea how many soldiers are in the approaching army? And how long do I have to set it up?”
“It
looks like a big one,” Yun replied before handing Laurence a simple
ring. “That’s an entrypoint to the vault. Take what you need from there,
just start soon”. With that said, Yun strode off to plan other things,
and left Laurence to his striding and muttering in joy at the prospect
of his set task.
After thinking up some rudimentary designs for
weapons Laurence looked at the ring that Yun had given him. As he
focused upon it the image of a huge room appeared within his mind. In
the room there were piles of materials of all kinds; animal skins,
bones, plants and stones, jars of fluids from all of the worlds, there
were even organs and muscles preserved in arrays for immediate use. It
was a true treasure trove, collected over the last cycle by Yun and his
family. This had the unfortunate addition of meaning that few of the
materials were of ultra high quality, but the vast majority were of
Saint or Heaven rank. Laurence licked his lips in excitement before
turning towards Piao. “How long until they get here and how many do you
think will be coming? Yun never actually answered me on that, He’s been
doing that a lot”.
“I’m not sure how many people are coming, it
could be as few as five-thousand, or as many as ten. It’s hard to tell
here. I can say that if it errs on the side of the higher numbers it’ll
be a couple of hours before they show up”.
“That’s not a lot of
time. I could make a small cannon array in the time given, but that’s
not what Yun’s looking for. I know it...” Before the conversation could
continue Laurence once again descended into unintelligible muttering. As
he began to walk off, Fen picked up his models and followed after his
master, carefully storing them away and preparing himself for the first
real piece of combat the boy would have seen in his life.
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