Depthless Hunger

They had started with eight Earth Souls. A mighty force, including all the strongest cultivators in the Manticore Quill faction. And now...

The Quill patriarch had thought their decision was absurd, ridiculous overkill against a foreigner who was clearly foolish and naive. Yes, all reports indicated that he had shrouded his true power, which was close to a Sky Soul, but rough mixtures of barbarian power tended to fail against polished formations. Just bringing enough for a formation should have been secure enough, since the target was most likely to believe their story and fall victim to their poison.

Then in just a brief time, their invincible force had been reduced to just two untouched cultivators: the others were all burned, poisoned, or even dead. They tried to maintain the formation, but the qi shattered as the target began to move.

Truthfully, the binding formation failed in part because the Quill patriarch lost his will, not just due to the losses. Because, as he saw the others crumple with poison, he realized that they had actually failed much earlier. The barbarian had known they wouldn't give a real offer from the first and had planned accordingly. If they had actually approached him, could they have made an alliance?

Too late. Instead the Quill patriarch watched as their coalition was torn apart.

For a moment he thought they had a chance: there were attacks striking the barbarian from all sides and the head of the poison faction stabbed her poison needles into his back, over and over. Yet as the barbarian stomped away, the Quill patriarch realized that he was intentionally taking the attacks. The poison didn't seem to slow him down, and when she darted in for a heavier dose, his hand closed around her head.

One of the wild tribe champions, a powerful man the Quill patriarch had barely dueled to a draw, was literally ripped in half. The barbarian wasn't using a weapon, but his body seemed to transform into one, mutating into something monstrous with every step.

When the hellish smoke emerged again, the patriarch barely managed to evade in time and saw one of his closest companions consumed. In a second they were nothing but a figure in the dark cloud, thrashing wildly as the sparks of fire and lightning consumed them until they crumbled to ash, leaving only the roiling darkness.

As the field thinned, the Quill patriarch unleashed an enormous qi attack, a swarm of spirit manticores that should have trampled everything. One of the injured Earth Souls was clipped by one and sent to the ground in a bloody spiral. And yet the barbarian charged through it, the spectral beasts exploding before they could touch him.

The attack came so swiftly that it didn't seem like it could possibly be human speed: the Quill patriarch was somehow on his back, pain radiating through his body. An enormous hand gripped his neck, but it was the face overhead that made him freeze in terror. As the barbarian opened his jaws, they seemed to yawn wide into emptiness...

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..

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Even as Ahn Xi Feida projected confidence for her followers and ordered them to attack, she wondered just what she was going to do.

The foreign barbarian had been their best hope of unifying the tribe and he had just gone to his death. He seemed to resist poison, so the Quill faction wouldn't take him down without casualties, but how many Earth Souls could he hope to defeat? She made her projections based on the idea that the Quill faction would be reduced by half at most, which put them in a grim position.

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Since they were losing their greatest asset, she needed to use him one last time. The Quill faction needed to overextend themselves that night, deploying nearly all their Earth Souls in one place. So, as soon as she realized what was going to happen, she commanded her soldiers to rush out and assault the enemy camp in the night.

Now she watched as they tore through, setting fire to tents and killing cultivators wherever they could. But despite the element of surprise, the Quill faction was still a prestigious part of the Manticore tribe, and far too many of their cultivators were ready to fight. Worse, they had many of the poison-using sub-tribes, who deployed traps and other poison techniques to take a heavy toll on her attack force.

Some of the Nascent Foundations chased down fleeing cultivators, only to run directly into an explosion of green smoke. Feida pulled a cloth over her mouth as she leapt toward them, then burst through the poison. She could avoid breathing it long enough to grab her allies and pull them free of the cloud, but they were coughing and clutching their throats, unable to fight even if they lived.

Those poisons were going to be a problem. The barbarian had asked about them, but the fool hadn't taken even one antidote. Had he intentionally gone to his death to leave them this chance? Feida took out one of their few antidotes and administered it to the strongest cultivator she'd rescued.

As she looked around, she saw that the battle had mostly ended... and Kulha was nowhere to be seen. She had really expected him to take the same action as she did, if he didn't go to help the barbarian. Was he smarter than she'd given him credit for? The most ruthless tactic would have been to hold back and let her take the risk, leaving his own troops uninjured to face the rest of the Quill faction. Not a battle she would have wanted to attempt, but Kulha was nothing if not confident.

The other variable was this Jackal mercenary - having a Sky Soul in the mix could throw off all her plans. If he was actually deployed here, that would be a huge problem, but she guessed that he would truly remain to guard the vault. That was the Quill faction's strongest point of leverage, after all, and their main claim to legitimacy.

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When Feida sensed a power closing on the battlefield, she thought that she was wrong after all and the Sky Soul was coming to exterminate them. She turned, a knife flickering to hand, only to see the barbarian.

Kai landed like a meteor and for a moment she could only stare at those burning eyes. He tried to hide his bulk with loose robes, but in that moment they only wrapped around the solid pillar of muscle. There wasn't a trace of blood on him, not even an injury, yet he seemed to radiate an aura of pure death.

"You..." Feida cleared her throat. "You escaped them?"

"No, I killed them," Kai said. "Good idea, fighting the rest while their Earth Souls were distracted."

"That's not possible... didn't they have eight?"

"I thought you might say that." He reached into his spatial ring and cast several objects to the ground, which rolled several times before she realized they were severed heads. Feida had killed plenty in her time, even stuck some heads on pikes herself, but the sight of so many dead Earth Souls still shocked her. "I didn't bring all eight," Kai said mildly, "but some of them didn't have heads left." 𝐑

Feida took a step back, despite herself. Months ago, she had foolishly believed that this was a young man who could be seduced, one way or another, and that seemed insane now. He wasn't a man, he was a beast, soft in the ways she expected cultivators to be hard and razor sharp in others.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"I'm sorry for doubting you." Feida gave a low bow, desperately hoping that he wouldn't strike at her bared neck. "I just... didn't think it would be possible."

"Why would I be angry? You gave me the information about their poison techniques like I asked." Kai continued to speak in gentle tones, but there was no gentleness in his eyes... he knew that she thought he was going to his death, and that she only planned to profit off it.

"Do you... plan to fight the Sky Soul next?"

"I think that would be premature. It looks like you're going to take heavy losses here."

"We'll handle it. If there's anything we can do for you..."

"You know, I want to hunt an actual manticore." Kai gave her an odd smile. "The monster, or sacred beast, or whatever the tribe is named after. Do you think you can arrange that?"

It would be difficult, because manticores were exceptionally rare these days, but Feida still nodded on instinct. When someone this powerful made a demand, all you could do was agree. She watched as he walked on, wondering what the hell she was going to do.

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..

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Ahn Rit Kulha still couldn't believe that everything had turned out like this. It just didn't make any sense. The world hadn't been normal for a long time, not since the Manticore patriarch fell ill, but it had become a bizarre nightmare ever since he had attacked that barbarian who wandered into their battle.

While Kai had gone to face the Earth Souls, and Feida had taken her Claw faction to attack the unprotected camp, Kulha had risked everything. He'd rushed his strongest Tail cultivators past all the other groups, trying to locate and seize the patriarch's legacy.

In theory, it could have worked. It almost did.

At first their surprise attack had been effective, smashing apart the defenders of the ancient wasteland outpost. But once they got past the outer walls, they had been met by not just the Jackal mercenary, but a contingent of other cultivators using strange foreign techniques. Kulha had been betting that everything about buying a Sky Soul was just a bluff, and he'd bet wrong.

It had taken the most he could do just to survive, fleeing the patriarch's vault carrying the bodies of his allies. He had put on a bold face with the others, claiming that the attack had always been intended to weaken the Manticore Quill faction. And it almost seemed true, because after losing their Earth Souls and suffering two vicious midnight attacks, they were retreating to safety and desperately focused on security.

Soon enough, though, they would realize that with their mercenary allies, they still had a strong advantage. And when they did, he wasn't sure that the Tail and Claw factions would be up to facing them.

"That's why we have to strike now," Feida was saying.

All three of them walked through the aftermath, past the lines of injured and poisoned bodies from both their factions. Kulha still hated her, but right now making the barbarian see sense seemed a lot more important. Strangely enough, he actually agreed with her.

"Hate to say it, but she's right," Kulha said. "The Manticore Quill faction is weak now, off balance. We need to take them now, before they recover and strengthen their defenses any more."

Kai shook his head. "Are you sure they'll still fight? They lost most of their leadership in that battle, so they might be willing to surrender."

"Those mercenaries were paid for a job, and they're not going to give up their advantage."

"He's right." Feida shot him a sour glance, but they were clearly in agreement here. "The Jackal tribe has the most prestigious reputation among mercenaries, never changing sides for money. If they were purchased for this battle, they'll fight until their contract runs out."

"That means abandoning everyone here." Kai gestured at all the bodies. "Most of them weren't poisoned too badly, and if we put all our efforts toward it, we could save most."

Kulha could only grit his teeth in bafflement at the barbarian. It was impossible to say he was weak, but the man definitely needed hardening. This was a civil war in the Manticore tribe, so of course some casualties were to be expected. How could they convince him that trying to save lives would waste their only opportunity to strike?

"Do you have a way to save them?' Feida asked. Kulha had to admit that was a good argument.

"No, but if I go back to your base at top speed, I sh-" Kai cut off in mid-word, his attention swiveling to the sky.

At first Kulha didn't feel anything, then he felt something approaching at terrifying speed. It was baffling at first until he made out the white vessel as it spiraled toward the ground and recognized it as a ship from one of the bigger sects in the south. Not all the way to the Southern Rivers, something different, an odd sect that had never been relevant...

It was still on the tip of his tongue when two women emerged from the vessel and all of Kulha's other thoughts were blown away.

The first woman was sex on legs, and they were fucking impressive legs. He could see the golden brown skin flashing through the slit in her dress and it was impossible not to think about those legs wrapping around his waist. His eyes were drawn up and the rest of her didn't disappoint, with a beautiful dress and an eye-catching pendant nestled between her breasts. Odd blue hair and darkish skin, but he could absolutely work with that.

He didn't notice the second woman at first, then he couldn't stop noticing her. She wore all white, like a pure cultivator maiden from one of the prissy female sects. Perfect jade skin and modest robes, yet they couldn't hide her massive tits. She looked like a perfect innocent maiden, just waiting to be dragged down into the filth.

Kulha realized that they were actually quite strong and his lust took a sharp turn. They were definitely Earth Souls, maybe even higher, which made them a massive potential threat, yet there was something about a woman who could fight him... were they more mercenaries? He couldn't think of any other reason that female sect members would be coming this far into the northern regions, so he braced himself for the worst.

For a moment they looked absolutely deadly, the taller woman an icy killer and the shorter one with merciless narrow eyes. Then, to his shock, their expressions dissolved into happiness and they leapt into the barbarian's arms.

All Kulha could do was stare.