Chapter 276: Array siege (5) |
As more of the second layer peeled away, Chen Ren eased back a little and found himself wondering whether it was really going to be this simple.
Not simple, he corrected in his own mind, but actually possible.They were breaking into the [Grand Aegis Array] with one city lord, a pile of stolen artifacts, and a force made mostly of people who, a few days ago, would have laughed if someone told them they were about to make history. Chen Ren expected the third layer to be the true nightmare of it all, and he still believed that. But compared to the hopelessness he had felt when he first stood before the array, the first two layers had not been as impossible as he had feared.
They were annoyingly stubborn. They always tried to repair themselves the moment the pressure lessened, but that was all.
There was enough force here to keep the first layer from fully closing, and the second—though slower to crack—was still yielding, piece by piece. Chen Ren watched another section of silver light peel away and felt something close to excitement settle in his chest.
They could actually do this. And truth to be told, not all of them needed to enter the city. That was important. Only a few would have to make it through, a small enough group that could break in and move fast while the others kept the damage open.
In the end, Chen Ren himself only needed a path to the master lift. That was all.
And for the first time since the siege began, that did not feel like a fantasy. It felt close.
“Sect Leader Chen, do you have any surprises left you haven’t told us about?”
Princess Yanyue’s voice cut cleanly through the thought. Chen Ren looked down at once.
She stood on the boat below, releasing one arrow after another with calm precision, using the openings in the first layer to strike the second whenever she saw the chance. Up until now, she had mostly stayed in a support role, and Chen Ren had not minded that because he knew her real firepower would likely matter much more when they reached the third layer.
Li Xuan immediately lowered the sword a little as Chen Ren tapped his shoulder and brought them closer to the boat.
“Why?” Chen Ren asked.
Yanyue loosed another arrow. It flashed out like lightning, struck the silver layer, and sent another ripple through it before she looked back at him.
“Because,” she said, “I have a feeling what we’re using right now won’t be enough for the third layer.”
Chen Ren looked back at the array before answering. “I know it won’t be easy. But we’re doing well right now.”
Princess Yanyue shook her head almost immediately.
“I know we are,” she said, “but the third layer is the one everyone says is nearly impossible to break. And I didn’t even know the [Grand Aegis Array] could create phantasm spirits out of its own energy.” Her eyes stayed on the barrier. “There may be more things hidden we don't know about.”
Beside her, Yalan sent out another burst of fireballs before giving a small nod.
“She’s not wrong. Things have a bad habit of going wrong right at the last step.”
Chen Ren nodded slowly.
He could not deny that what Yanyue was saying made sense. The problem was that there was only so much one could prepare for. He could not build countermeasures against tricks he did not know existed.
“There’s still no sign of City Lord Xiangrui. Maybe he joins later, but I’m not counting on it. If he meant to help from the start, he would already be here, but other than him, there's nothing else I have prepared,” he said in the end.
That did not seem to reassure Princess Yanyue much. Her eyes went back to the array. “Then let’s hope nothing goes wrong. This assault has gone far better than I expected so far. I just hope we can really reach the master lift.”
Even as the words left her mouth, her eyes still held more caution than belief, but it was better than before. Chen Ren let that be enough.
He turned his attention back to the array.
“Just be ready to move up soon. The moment the third layer opens, even a little, we need to be close enough to push through before it recovers.”
The words had barely left him when something changed ahead.
Shrey pushed through the broken second layer. He was now standing in the space between it and the third, with Han Qingshi moving in right behind him.
A few of the Frostpeak Sect disciples cheered at the sight immediately.
Han Qingshi lifted his chains up for a second, almost as if acknowledging the cheers behind him, then swung them hard at the golden sheen of the third layer.
Just as Chen Ren had expected, it did almost nothing.
The chains struck and bounced away. The surface did not crack. It did not even seem to notice the blow. No mark remained where the attack had landed.
Then Shrey stepped in. The nyrath beneath him let out a sharp growl as the man moved forward and drove a punch into the third layer.
Nothing happened this time either.
He punched again, and again, but the results didn't change.
The golden barrier did not shake. It did not waver. It simply stood there, fixed and still, like something that had never once considered the possibility of being broken. Even the cultivators around Chen Ren, who had been attacking without pause until now, started to hesitate as they watched.
Then Shrey changed his strategy. He took a step back and closed his eyes.
The next moment, crimson qi burst out of him.
Chen Ren saw immediately that his qi was not really a fire aspected. It felt like something harsher than that, something closer to wrath given shape and forced into energy. The red qi twisted around Shrey’s fists in a heavy, violent swirl before he moved again.
This time, every punch sounded like a falling meteor.
Shockwaves burst outward from each strike. Han Qingshi, who had still been between the second and third layers, was actually pushed backward by the force of them. The nyrath also joined in, ramming its heads into the golden barrier over and over as if it refused to let its master strike alone.
And yet, the third layer remained exactly as it was. No visible cracks appeared.
Chen Ren felt his chest sink.
He knew Shrey was probably not at the absolute limit of what he could do yet, but even so, the strength in those punches was terrifying. The fact that they were doing nothing at all to the third layer was enough to make the situation feel suddenly much worse.
By now, attacks on the second layer with even a fraction of that force would have been enough to spread cracks through it.
So what did the third layer actually require? How much more firepower was he supposed to find?
He looked at the contraption again.
It was still firing disintegration spheres, still chewing away at the damaged layers, but Chen Ren no longer trusted it to help against the third one. Even if one of its stronger attacks might work, the thing was too random to rely on, and sooner or later it would shift into something useless again.
So what was he supposed to do?
He pushed his mind hard, searching for anything—some method, some opening, some way to at least start a crack in the third layer.
Then something else happened.
While Shrey kept striking, the golden layer suddenly trembled.
At first Chen Ren thought it had finally reacted to the blows.
Then he realized the shaking was not local. It ran across the whole array, all the way around the city.
Shrey noticed it too. He stepped back immediately, and his mount turned at once. In the next heartbeat, the beast lunged away from the barrier entirely, carrying Shrey out from between the layers. Han Qingshi did not ask questions. He pulled away right after him.
A cold feeling ran down Chen Ren’s spine.
He still did not fully understand what was happening, but as the golden layer kept trembling, one thing became painfully clear.
They needed to get away from it.At once, he shouted, “Up! Everyone, get over the array! Don’t stay in front of it! Put as much distance between yourselves and it as you can!”
The response was immediate.
The whole formation broke apart as cultivators and boats scattered upward. Li Xuan drove the flying sword higher without waiting for a second order, and on the far side Chen Ren saw Shrey doing the same. That alone was enough to tell him he had made the right call.
As they climbed, Chen Ren kept his eyes fixed on the array.
The light of the third layer was growing brighter—like it was building towards something. And the moment he understood what that meant, he shouted again, louder this time.
“Higher! Move! The array is about to fire a massive beam!”
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The air turned chaotic almost immediately. Shouts rose from every side as the cultivators on flying swords increased their speed, their blades cutting sharply upward as they rushed to get above the city where, hopefully, the beam would not be able to reach them.
The boats, however, were another matter entirely.
They were slower, heavier, and far less suited for a sudden retreat.
A few of them had started rising the moment Chen Ren shouted and had already gained enough height to give him some hope, but others were still climbing too slowly, their speed nowhere near enough for the danger gathering below.
Out of all of them, the worst off was the boat carrying the twins, the deflecting mirrors, and then the one with the contraption. It lagged badly behind the others, weighed down by everything on it, while the golden light over the third layer brightened with every passing breath.
Chen Ren immediately panicked.
He knew very well that the mirrors might have been able to handle the lesser beams from the first and second layers, but something fired from the third was another matter entirely. He doubted they would hold for even a second. The thought hit him hard enough that a curse slipped out before he even noticed it.
He turned at once to Li Xuan. “We need to get those people out.”
Li Xuan’s eyes widened. “How are we even going to do that?”
“You know how. If you don’t want to come, then jump off the sword. I’ll go alone.”
For a moment, Li Xuan looked like he wanted to argue. His teeth clenched so hard Chen Ren could see the tension in his face, but in the next instant the sword moved anyway.
It surged forward.
They shot past Princess Yanyue and Yalan’s boat, close enough that the cat immediately barked, “Where the fuck are you going?”
Chen Ren ignored her. He kept his attention fixed ahead, on the twins’ boat and the royal guard still trying to push the boat with the contraption higher fast enough to matter. Li Xuan drove the sword harder, and by the time they reached the struggling vessels, the golden light below had grown so bright that it was beginning to hurt Chen Ren’s eyes.
Li Xuan pulled the sword into place between the two boats and held it there.
“Get on!” Chen Ren shouted.
The twins and the royal guard had already gone pale enough that he did not need to tell them twice. They scrambled toward the edge of the boat at once, reaching for the sword, trying to cross the gap before it was too late.
“Chen Ren… look ahead,” Li Xuan said suddenly.
Chen Ren turned at once, and the sight almost made his blood stop.
The golden layer was no longer merely glowing. It had turned molten with light, shimmering so fiercely that the whole barrier seemed to blur at the edges, and then the beam came. It did not feel like an attack so much as the sky itself opening and pouring judgment downward. The golden light spread so wide that for one terrible second Chen Ren felt as though there was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to dodge, nowhere left to even breathe.
His eyes widened, but his body moved before thought could catch up.
He and Li Xuan pushed their qi out together, their hands lifting at the same instant as a shield took shape before them. The twins and the royal guard reacted just as quickly, pouring their own strength into it, but even as the barrier rose, Chen Ren already knew that was futile comfort. The sort of thing people built when death was already on top of them and standing still somehow felt worse.
Then he felt something hit his shoulder.
Chen Ren turned just enough to see Yalan shaking her head at him as if he were the biggest fool she had ever met.
The next second, her eyes lit.
Fire burst from her tail in a violent surge, and a massive wall of flame roared into existence above them. It rose so suddenly and so fiercely that the air itself seemed to burn around it.
When the beam struck, the collision sent a shockwave through everything. The boats lurched. The flying sword trembled beneath Chen Ren’s feet. The whole world narrowed into gold and fire grinding against one another in the sky.
For a few breaths, Chen Ren could see nothing else.
Everywhere he looked was golden light, blazing so bright that it burned against his eyes. Even without taking the beam directly, he could feel the heat rolling off it in waves, fierce enough to make his skin sting.
If Yalan had not thrown that wall up when she did, Chen Ren knew the beam would have smashed him and everyone around him straight out of the sky, and from there they would have fallen all the way down to one of the lower cities. That would not have been a fall anyone walked away from.
But even with her flames holding the front of it, Yalan was straining.
Chen Ren could see it in the way her body tensed, in the way more and more fire poured from her tail while her jaw clenched harder with every passing second. The beam did not weaken. It kept pressing, its force still rising, as if the array had decided that this was the moment it would stop playing with them and simply erase them all.
The rest of them reacted without needing to be told.
Defensive techniques rose from every side. Qi barriers, spell screens, every scrap of protection anyone could force out under pressure was thrown behind Yalan’s flames, trying to thicken them, trying to take even a little of the burden off her.
It still didn’t feel like enough.
Then, without warning, the beam intensified again.
The change was sharp enough that Chen Ren felt it in his bones. The golden light swelled, pushed harder, and for one awful instant it truly felt as though the array had decided that none of them would be allowed to leave alive.
Yalan screamed. Chen Ren had never heard that sound from her before.
She still kept forcing more and more qi into the wall of flame, but Chen Ren could feel the truth of it even without anyone saying it aloud.
It was not going to hold forever.
That knowledge hit him hard enough that he moved before he had fully thought it through. He jumped onto one of the boats and turned toward the others.
“Go with Li Xuan,” he said. “All of you. I’ll stay and help Yalan. The beam has to die down sooner or later.”
Yalan immediately snapped back, “Chen Ren, you go with them too!”
“There’s no way I’m leaving you here alone.”
After saying that, he simply thrust more qi out of his hands and pushed it into the failing barrier, trying to force the beam back with everything he still had. But he knew how hopeless the effort felt.
It was like trying to shove a mountain with bare hands. The pressure pressing down on them was so overwhelming that Chen Ren could not even spare enough attention to know whether the others had actually obeyed him or not. All he could do was keep his eyes on the beam and pray for it to weaken.
It did not.
The array held it there without the slightest sign of mercy.
And then the first real break came.
Part of Yalan’s flame shield split open under the strain, just enough to let one thin edge of the beam slip through. It struck the royal guard across the shoulder, and the man screamed as part of his armor blackened instantly under the touch of it.
Chen Ren looked over just long enough to understand that was how they were going to die if nothing changed.
For one moment, the only hope left in him was Shrey. The city lord was the only person who might still be able to interfere strongly enough to matter, and that had been one of the reasons Chen Ren had risked doubling back to save the others instead of escaping earlier when he could have justified it to himself.
But the longer the seconds passed, the weaker that hope became.
The whole sky had become a wall of golden destruction. It was hard to imagine anyone moving through it, even someone like Shrey, and just as that thought settled in, more of the flame-and-lightning defense started peeling away.
Chen Ren twisted sharply when another thin strip of the beam cut toward him, missing him by a breath.
“Chen Ren, get out!” Yalan shouted again.
Heat was everywhere now. It pressed against his skin, his lungs, his eyes. Behind him, the twins cried out in panic.
Still, Chen Ren shook his head.
There was no way he was going to run if Yalan stayed behind. “I’m not leaving.”
Yalan’s voice came back raw with strain. “Then we’re going to die!”
Chen Ren bared his teeth and kept his hands locked forward.
“Then so be it.”
And as the wall of flame and lightning continued to crack in front of them, he poured every last scrap of qi he had left into it.
***
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