Chapter 278: Array siege (7) |
When Princess Yanyue first told Chen Ren about the [Grand Aegis Array], one of the things she warned him about was its habit of trapping cultivators who tried to force their way through it one layer at a time. That had been one of the earliest dangers he had kept in mind while building the siege plan, and it was also a large part of why they had worked so hard to tear open as much of the first and second layers as possible instead of just making one narrow breach and rushing in.
But the assault had gone on for long enough, and the array had behaved simply enough, that Chen Ren had started to think this version of the [Grand Aegis Array] might not have that feature after all.
He was painfully wrong.
At first, the golden layer only trembled and began to shine again, and seeing that, Chen Ren naturally thought it was preparing to fire another beam. This time, though, City Lord Xiangrui was already in position. The man did not even look troubled. He simply raised his voice and told everyone not to panic, then in the next instant created a vast sheet of blackened ice in front of the array, widening it again and again until it stretched far enough to shield most of the front.
After that, he stood behind it as if there was no possibility in his mind that it could fail.
Even with that confidence, plenty of the cultivators outside the array still chose to retreat upward, unwilling to risk getting caught in the beam if something went wrong. Even Han Qingshi pulled back one layer, clearly ready to flee if the situation turned against them. Only Shrey remained between the silver and golden layers, with his mount waiting just behind Xiangrui’s ice wall.
That, more than Xiangrui’s words, was what gave Chen Ren confidence enough to stay where he was.
Then the golden beam came.
It crashed into the sheet of ice with enough force to shake the air itself. Around the edges, where the beam spilled past the wall’s cover, it tore through whatever layers it touched without resistance, but where it struck the blackened ice directly, it did not pass through cleanly. It only burned into it, eating away at the frozen surface while Xiangrui held it in place, and simply kept making more ice.
Yet it never did.
The beam burned into it, melted parts of it away, and filled the air with hissing steam, but whenever a section thinned too much, Xiangrui fed more qi into it and rebuilt it before the damage could spread.
The sight was almost absurd.
Chen Ren had already seen the city lord shield them from the golden beam once, but this was on a completely different scale. Back then Xiangrui had only needed to save a small group. Now the shield stretched across a broad section of the array, wide enough to protect the entire assault front, and still the man floated there with the same relaxed expression as though nothing about it truly concerned him.
Chen Ren was not naive enough to think it cost Xiangrui nothing.
Even so, it was hard to imagine the beam making any serious dent in the city lord’s reserves. That much became clearer with every passing second, and slowly Chen Ren let some of his own tension loosen. He had already begun thinking ahead again, expecting that the moment the beam died, all of them would return to hammering the array until the next opening appeared.
And for a moment, that seemed exactly how things would go.
The golden beam weakened, thinned, and finally began to fade.
Then the array moved.
The whole thing shuddered at once, violently enough to make Chen Ren’s stomach drop, and before he could even decide whether it was preparing another attack, the layers lurched inward. It happened so fast that there was barely time to understand it.
Yalan reacted before he did. “We need to get out now!”
Li Xuan did not wait for another word. He turned the sword immediately and shot toward the first layer, aiming for one of the cracks that had not fully closed yet. For one heartbeat, Chen Ren thought they would make it.
Then a jolt ran through the array.
The crack they were racing toward flashed, and in the next instant a sheet of golden energy sealed over it.
Chen Ren’s eyes widened.
He thrust out a hand at once and hurled a lance of lightning straight at it. But when the lightning hit the golden covering, it did nothing.
The attack only glanced off it and scattered away.
Yalan moved right after. She sprang over Chen Ren’s shoulders and onto Li Xuan, flames already racing along her tail until it looked less like flesh and more like a burning weapon. Then she leapt straight at the sealed crack and swung her tail down on the golden qi with all the force she could gather.
This time the covering shook. But that was all.
Nothing broke.
Yalan landed back on the front of the sword, and when Chen Ren looked at her face, he saw something he did not like there at all—real panic. Around them, Han Qingshi was trying the same in his own way, chains lashing out again and again as he aimed for the reddish sections that still looked thinner than the rest. But the golden light spread over those too, sealing them before he could force his way through.
The giant swore loudly. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
Before Chen Ren could answer, both city lords arrived.
Their presence alone made the narrowing gap feel even tighter, as if too much power had been stuffed into too little space. The array kept closing around them at a pace that made thinking difficult. Xiangrui reacted first. He raised a hand, formed a massive spear of black ice, and drove it into the barrier. Sparks burst out in every direction where it struck.
The golden covering still held.
And with that, the pressure in Chen Ren’s chest began to turn into something uglier. The gap around them kept shrinking. Li Xuan looked at the closing walls, then at Chen Ren, and shouted,
“What do we do?”
For one ugly moment, Chen Ren genuinely thought this might be where it ended—that they would simply be crushed inside the array like insects between closing teeth.
Then Shrey’s mount growled.
The sound cut through the panic sharply enough that everyone looked his way, and the merchant—still in that swollen, monstrous form of his—said, “Give me space.”
Chen Ren turned toward him at once, not yet understanding what the man intended, but Li Xuan did not wait to ask. He pulled the sword aside immediately.
Even with the space closing in around them, the width of the array still gave them just enough room to move. Li Xuan pulled the flying sword farther aside, and the others followed quickly. Han Qingshi retreated with a curse under his breath, while City Lord Xiangrui drifted toward the edge as well, his eyes fixed on the golden layer spreading over the red one like liquid light hardening into a wall.
Then Shrey attacked.
A wave of crimson qi burst out from him so violently that even the flying sword shook under it. Chen Ren felt the force before he fully understood it. It rolled through the shrinking space like heat given shape, and when it struck the array, the whole golden layer seemed to recoil. Even standing at the edge of that qi made Chen Ren’s chest tighten. For a second, it felt as though his own body had stopped belonging to him, as if the crimson pressure was trying to pin him in place and burn away whatever was left.
He forced himself to breathe through it.
Then he looked properly to see the golden layer melting.
Parts of it were actually breaking away under the crimson qi, and Shrey kept pouring more of that terrifying power into it. Sweat had already started to soak his face and clothes, yet he did not stop. The opening widened little by little until it was nearly large enough.
Then his mount growled.
The beast did not wait for permission. The moment the hole became passable, it lowered itself and charged. Shrey ducked over its back as it lunged straight through the torn gap and out beyond the closing layers.
The pressure of the crimson qi eased almost immediately after that.
Chen Ren didn’t waste even a heartbeat.
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“Move! Get out now!”
By then the gap had shrunk even further, enough that Li Xuan had to angle the sword carefully just to keep it from scraping the curving edges of the array. Ahead of them, Han Qingshi somehow forced himself through first, though not without cost. The closing layer raked across him badly enough to draw blood before he finally cleared it. Xiangrui followed more cleanly, simply throwing himself through with the same cold confidence he seemed to wear in everything.
Then it was their turn.
As the flying sword reached the opening, Chen Ren and Li Xuan both dropped low, nearly folding themselves over the blade as it cut through the narrowing space.
For one awful second, Chen Ren felt the edge of the closing layer brush so close to his throat that he thought he was about to lose his head there and then. But the sword cleared the gap in time, and the moment they were fully out, he let out a long breath. His heart was pounding.
It hit his ribs fast enough that he could feel it in his throat, and for a moment he could do nothing but reach into his spatial ring, pull out a waterskin, and drink.
The water was cold enough to sting as it went down, but it helped a little.
Only then did he turn back toward the array.
It had already sealed itself shut.
All three layers were pressed together again with no gap left between them, the barrier becoming a single impossible structure hanging over the city. But as Chen Ren watched, the array shifted. The layers separated back into their usual form, settling once more into the pattern he had first seen—red, silver, and gold—while the cracks and breaks they had made slowly began closing in the more ordinary way, and the golden sheen withdrew neatly back into the third layer as though nothing unusual had happened at all.
Chen Ren kept staring at it.
For a moment, it almost felt as though the thing was mocking him.
Not in any real, conscious way, but in the way an impossible obstacle sometimes seemed to carry its own personality. The array looked as if it were telling him to try again, daring him to keep throwing himself against it just to be reminded how far above him it still stood.
And it was a brutal challenge.
He had come close twice now to believe they could break through it. Just when it had started to feel possible, the array had changed and shown him another set of fangs. It was as if it wanted to remind him that no matter how much progress he made, it still had more in reserve. It could still crush him whenever it pleased.
That was more than frustrating.
It was exhausting.
Not just because of the array itself, but because of everything riding on this. The pressure of it sat on him from all sides, and he became aware of it more keenly when he felt the eyes behind him. Everyone was looking at him now. Waiting for him to say whether they would continue or whether this was the point where even he admitted defeat.
Giving up was not truly an option. He knew that.
But some bitter, exhausted part of him wanted to anyway, if only because he was certain the array still had more waiting for them the next time they pushed it.
Even with two city lords on his side, Chen Ren was no longer sure they would survive whatever the array threw at them next.
That was the part he hated most.
Not the pain, not the danger, not even the humiliation of being forced back after coming so close, but the fact that he could no longer clearly see the next step. The array had made that much obvious. It was not something they could simply keep battering until it gave in. Every time they thought they had found its rhythm, it changed.
As he stood there looking at it, Yalan placed a paw against his leg.
Chen Ren looked down.
“You need to think carefully about what comes next,” she said. “We can’t just attack it the same way again. The array has been too unpredictable. If it wasn’t, Shrey wouldn’t have needed to bring out his domain just to get us out.”
Chen Ren blinked at that.
He had known Shrey had used something beyond him to tear open the way, but hearing Yalan mention it was his domain shocked him. And the moment that thought settled, another one rose behind it.
Could they use the city lords’ domains to break through the third layer entirely?
The domains had clearly helped massively against the golden layer. That much was undeniable. For a second, the possibility took shape in his mind, but before he could even ask the question aloud, he saw Shrey and City Lord Xiangrui drifting closer.
The merchant spoke first. “If you’re thinking about asking me to use my domain again, don’t.”
Xiangrui gave a slight nod beside him. “Yes. That would not be a workable plan.”
Chen Ren frowned and asked, “Why?”
Shrey looked back toward the array before answering. “Because me or even Xiangrui can’t keep it up.” He paused, then added, “The pagoda places limits on what city lords can do with their domains. I don’t know the exact reason. Maybe it was built that way so we couldn’t go to war seriously enough to destroy an entire floor. Whatever the case, using mine for even those few seconds cost too much… It’s not something you can rely on.”
Xiangrui nodded again. “Yes. If you still want to break this array, then you need a different answer. One that doesn’t kill us in the process.” His gaze settled on Chen Ren, cool and direct. “I did not come here to die for a climber.”
Hearing that, Li Xuan frowned immediately.
“Then what else can we do? The array is far too unpredictable. For all we know, the moment we make even a small crack in the golden layer, it might start throwing qi missiles at us from every side.”
City Lord Xiangrui let out a quiet snort. “It probably would,” he said. “Did you think they placed a [Grand Aegis Array] here for decoration?”
Chen Ren gave a slow nod, but his mind had already started moving away from their voices and back toward the array itself. Darker and darker possibilities kept surfacing in his head, each one more exhausting than the last, until he muttered almost to himself, “It’s almost like it keeps increasing its response intensity every time we get close enough to break through.”
The words left him casually. But the moment he registered them, something in his mind shifted.
Chen Ren looked up sharply at the array.
Then he repeated the thought to himself, once, twice, again and again, turning it over until the weight of it began to settle into place. Li Xuan noticed the change in him first and asked, “What are you thinking?”
Chen Ren’s eyes stayed on the array. “It isn’t unpredictable.”
Li Xuan blinked. “What?”
This time Chen Ren looked at all of them—the city lords, Li Xuan, Yalan, Han Qingshi, Princess Yanyue, the cultivators waiting on their swords and boats, all of them still caught between frustration and caution.
“The array isn’t unpredictable,” he repeated, louder this time. “It’s extremely predictable.”
Shrey frowned. “How?”
Chen Ren shdid not answer right away.
He needed the thought to settle fully first. He kept working through it in silence, tracing back through everything the array had done from the beginning of the siege. The first layer, the beams, the phantasm eagles, the golden beam, the closing layers and none of it had been random.
And the more he thought, the more certain he became.
By the time he finally began speaking, the look on every face around him slowly started to change.
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