Chapter 380: The Four-Branched Spear |
Spring lingered at the edge of summer, almost reluctant to loosen its grip.
Chun Nu yawned as he stared across what some considered one of the countless front lines in the war against the Blazing Sun Sect.
He was one of many young disciples brought here after the sect was caught with its pants down when it tried to sue for peace.
He had never even met the woman called Song Song, yet he cursed her name every day and hoped she would meet a nasty death, defiled by filthy villagers.
The land surrounding the temporary camp was quietly alive with measured fun. No one dared make too much noise, afraid of attracting the enemy.
This world was strangely redundant in such things, and Chun Nu often had to remind himself of that.
It had been the same for as long as he could remember.
He sighed.
At least the view was nice.
The air was warm, carrying the clean scent of earth, leaves, and distant water from the nearby river.
It was the kind of season that made the world feel congruous.
If only there weren’t a war going on, he could have actually enjoyed it.
He glanced back toward the camp. It was surrounded by trees whose branches were heavy with new leaves. Insects hummed lazily through the air, and somewhere beyond the treeline, birds called to one another.
Even the ground seemed content, dry on the surface, yet cool beneath, still holding the last of spring rains.
Fuck, this would be a nice place to retire, Chun Nu thought.
He stood at the edge of the camp, a spear resting lightly in his grasp as he kept watch.
His posture was relaxed, the ease of someone long accustomed to vigilance.
Growing up, Chun Nu was called a genius by many, praised for his unusual intelligence for someone his age.
But there was a secret he had told no one.
He had already lived once before.
He had died.
And then he had reincarnated.
His dark hair was tied neatly behind his head, unmoving despite the breeze tugging at the tall grass around his legs. Long hair meant better luck and a longer life. It had been a tradition from his homeland in his previous world.
He watched the slow shifting of shadows, the subtle ripple of leaves, the way clouds drifted unhurriedly across the open sky.
To an untrained eye, the scene was peaceful.
To Chun Nu, peace was something that had to be guarded.
The season made such duty feel almost unnecessary.
Spring had been nearly perfect this year with generous rains, gentle warmth, and no sudden calamities to scar the land. It was the kind of weather that lulled people into lowering their guard, into believing danger would announce itself before arriving.
Chun Nu did not share that belief.
Even surrounded by beauty, he tightened the grip on his weapon, alert for anything that might disturb the fragile harmony.
In his previous world, he had been a colonizer who butchered the four-armed people of newly discovered lands. Though he wouldn't necessarily even call those savages people.
He had been a conquistador.
Beyond the rolling fields, the world stretched outward in quiet promise. And though nothing stirred beyond the ordinary, Chun Nu remained still, watching, as if he alone understood how easily perfection could fracture.
In his previous life, he had died in an ambush caused by his own carelessness.
The four-armed barbarians had been great warriors. They used their upper arms to wield long weapons such as spears, glaives, and halberds, while their lower arms carried short swords, axes, and hooked blades.
It was a deadly combination.
But the pure humans had superior armor and weapons made of steel. Combined with technological advantages like siege towers that granted height superiority, giant crossbows, mechanical ballistae, war wagons, trebuchets, and other counterweight launchers, the battlefield favored them.
And then there were the organized long pike formations.
Four arms offered little advantage against a four-meter pike.
Those were the days.
He had fought in more than a dozen battles and had even slain a four-armed barbarian in single combat. Sure, the creature had already been wounded, but nobody else knew that. At the time, it had been such an honor that he had nearly been promoted above the rank of foot soldier.
Only for it all to wash away when he died in a stupid ambush.
The next thing he remembered was being covered in strange liquids while shadowy giants held him down. For a moment, he had even forgotten how to breathe.
At least in this life, he had been somewhat fortunate.
He had been born as the third son of the eighth wife of an inner elder of the Titanic Blade Sect. His talent was actually decent, and his father favored him.
Still, it was a shame he had died in his previous life before ever owning his own four-armed slave.
But at least he had arrived in a world where people wielded power comparable to that of gods.
For a long time, he had believed this rebirth was a blessing from Thal'Mora, the Devouring Oracle, and a goddess depicted with two arms and a severed human arm clenched between her teeth. The severed arm was said to deliver prophecies through gestures when words failed.
Her religion had exploded in popularity after the new continent had been discovered.
Either way, Chun Nu had already decided on his path.
He would return to his roots from his previous life.
Within a decade or two, he would reach Foundation Establishment. After that, he would travel to remote territories where minor sects were ruled by nothing more than Qi Gathering cultivators.
Why fight the strong when he could rule the weak?
He could become a king among small fish. Live in luxury for a century at peak health. Fathering a hundred children with countless beauties.
It was far better than dying here, competing for scraps of strength that meant little in the grand scheme of things.
How many people actually reached the Nascent Soul stage everyone dreamed about?
Even Core Formation cultivators were rare.
They only seemed common when one lived among the great sects.
He leaned against a tree, watching the camp.
It held thirteen people and a cluster of shoddy tents. A pot hung over a small fire where something was being cooked.
Even the food here was barely palatable.
When the chance came to take over weaker regions, he would definitely bring slavery back. Only now did he truly understand how terrible food tasted without cooking slaves and how cold a bed felt without pleasure slaves.
He was really suffering.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
When this war was over, he planned to beg his father for cultivation supplements. Lying alone in a dark room for months, what they called indoor cultivation, would drive him insane.
As for this war?
He had no intention of actually participating in it. He would stick to the safest areas possible. His father had already pulled a few strings to have him stationed here.
Besides, he was only eighteen.
His talent was good enough that he would become a Foundation Establishment cultivator in his mid-thirties.
Perhaps mid-forties.
Cultivation was tedious, after all.
And even if he ended up becoming nothing more than an Outer Elder someday, he didn’t care. He had no plans to remain in the sect long enough for them to keep pressing their thumb down on him.
“Chun Nu, your guarding shift is over. I’m here to take over for you,” one of the other disciples called out.
Her tone didn’t bother hiding how disgusted she was with him.
The one replacing him was a young woman, perhaps a year or two older than Chun Nu, with similar talent. She had dark hair, brown eyes, and callused hands from practicing swordsmanship.
Her looks were below average.
Perhaps average if she bothered taking care of herself and wore some makeup.
One lonely night in the camp, Chun Nu had tried bringing her drinks in an attempt to lure her into bed.
She had seen straight through his intentions.
Since then, she had never bothered hiding her disgust.
The unfortunate part was that she was also stronger than him, her cultivation nearly six stars higher. So if a fight ever broke out, he had to be careful.
She might decide to solve certain problems with her own hands.
She probably would have already done so if he hadn’t been the son of an Inner Elder.
“What are you dozing off for?” she snapped. “Have you forgotten how human speech works?”
“Yes, I will go and rest now,” Chun Nu said lazily.
He stabbed his spear into the ground and walked away with his hands behind his head, yawning.
He used a spear because he had trained with it in his previous life. Besides, spears had reach, and reach mattered more than anything else in weapons.
Though for some reason, the strongest weapon sect here was a sword sect.
Chun Nu walked toward his tent while the other disciples talked and joked among themselves.
He didn’t even bother trying to socialize with those useless idiots.
He lay down and quickly drifted off to sleep.
Perhaps he would dream about the future he imagined for himself.
…
As he slept in the deepest part of his dreams, Chun Nu felt something like fire bloom inside his chest.
At first, he thought it was an illusion. Then he gasped as the pain became unbearable.
It wasn’t heat in the ordinary sense. It was something deeper like an invasive, searing presence spreading outward from his heart, as if his very blood had been set alight.
Chun Nu's eyes snapped open.
A hoarse gasp tore from his lungs.
Pain followed a heartbeat later, sharp and disorienting, burning away the last remnants of sleep.
He lurched upright and shoved open the flap of his tent, half-falling as he stumbled into the open air.
The cold night breeze did nothing to ease the burning in his chest.
The full moon hung bright overhead, yet the world spun violently around him. A migraine crashed down as though an axe had been driven straight into his skull and twisted for good measure.
His vision fractured.
Chun Nu staggered two unsteady steps before his legs gave out beneath him. He collapsed onto the ground, palms scraping against dirt and flattened grass.
He forced himself to look up.
All around him, the camp lay in eerie stillness.
Other cultivators were scattered across the clearing, some near extinguished campfires, others half-sprawled outside their tents.
None had wounds.
No blood.
No signs of struggle.
Their eyes were open, staring blankly at the sky or the ground, their faces frozen somewhere between confusion and panic.
If not for the emptiness behind their gazes, Chun Nu might have believed they were merely unconscious.
A chill crawled slowly up his spine.
“Oho?” a voice said lightly, breaking the silence. “Someone still alive after all this?”
The tone was casual.
Almost pleased.
As if the speaker were commenting on an unexpected detail rather than standing in the middle of a field of corpses.
“I thought I had perfected this Soul Burning Poison.”
Soul Burning…?
The words barely registered.
Chun Nu’s thoughts slipped apart, struggling to form under the pounding agony in his skull and the inferno gnawing through his chest.
Still, he understood.
This wasn’t an accident.
It was an ambush.
Again.
Grinding his teeth, Chun Nu forced his gaze toward the source of the voice.
His heart sank the moment he saw the figure standing at the edge of the clearing.
A man stood there calmly.
His posture was relaxed, his hands clasped behind his back.
A smooth porcelain mask covered his face, pale and expressionless. Its surface caught the faint moonlight like polished bone.
Behind it, a pair of green eyes gleamed unnaturally bright.
They were fixed directly on Chun Nu.
The color drained from Chun Nu’s face.
Those eyes did not belong to someone who had merely come to kill.
They belonged to someone who had come to observe.
To verify something with his own eyes.
To treat human lives like playthings.
Oh.
This was Song San.
The realization struck Chun Nu harder than the poison burning through his chest.
Dread pooled in his stomach as the name aligned with the porcelain mask and those cold green eyes.
Of all the monsters he could have faced....
Of all the enemies fate could have placed before him...
It had to be this one.
The Poison Devil of the battlefield.
The man the Titanic Blade Sect had built entire doctrines around not how to defeat him, but how to survive him.
Rules flashed through Chun Nu’s fading thoughts, half-remembered and bitterly useless now.
Rule one: in large-scale battles, everyone was ordered to fight upwind. No exceptions.
Even though Core Formation cultivators were not supposed to take part in open wars, that had never stopped Song San from distributing his creations among his soldiers, turning entire formations into walking poison vessels.
Rule two: every team should have at least one wind-element cultivator, specifically to counter poison gas.
There were rumors that Song San used those teams to field-test his poisons, recording how long it took before they collapsed and how the symptoms progressed.
No one had ever confirmed it. No one who could confirm it had lived long enough to do so.
Rule three: when facing Blazing Sun Sect disciples, battles were to be dragged into open plains rather than forests, where fumes could linger and seep invisibly through leaves and bark.
Immediate and unquestioned retreat was mandatory at the first sign of poison.
You withdrew and let the antidotes disperse the toxins before they could cause irreversible damage.
Rule four: engagement doctrine revolved entirely around denial.
No setup time for the enemy. Long-range harassment and hit-and-run tactics.
You crushed the disciples carrying Song San’s poison quickly, or you didn’t fight them at all.
Even hunting and scavenging from the land had been forbidden. Water, beasts, plants, and everything else could be tainted.
Song San had done exactly that once against the Azure Frost Sect. Since then, everyone had been cautious.
That was why most strike teams targeted herb farms and venom pits first, the lifelines of the Blazing Sun battle camps. Song San couldn’t make poison out of nothing.
Sever the supply.
And maybe, just maybe, you could weaken the devil behind the mask.
And recently…
A desperate strategy had begun circulating.
Spreading false rumors that Song San’s poison no longer worked.
Fake immunity rituals and false confidence meant to bait people into overextending.
Chun Nu felt sick.
Fuck.
That might be why he was here personally.
The realization crushed what little strength he had left.
Damn…
Dying in an ambush again.
The edges of his vision darkened, shadows creeping inward as if the world itself were slowly closing its eyes on him.
His limbs refused to respond.
He dragged himself forward weakly, fingernails scraping against the dirt, but it was useless. The burning in his chest flared brighter, draining his life force as if it were fuel thrown onto a fire.
He could feel himself unraveling.
“Wait,” Song San said, tilting his head slightly. “Why can you resist this long?”
The words barely reached Chun Nu. Sound felt distant now, stretched thin.
His thoughts broke apart into fragments.
Song San’s voice continued, drifting casually through the clearing, more like a man thinking aloud than addressing someone dying at his feet.
“Crafting a Soul Burning Poison is very complicated,” he mused. “Perhaps I should get Liu Feng’s help with it. After all, he wants that leech gone just as much as I do.”
A faint chuckle followed. “But if he finds out I’m testing this on people, he might whine to my crazy bitch of a sister to shut down my operations and drag me back by the collar.”
There was a brief pause.
“Troublesome," the madman added. “I should probably keep trying a while longer.”
The darkness swallowed the last of Chun Nu’s sight, and the porcelain mask watched until the body stopped moving.
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