A Waste of Time-Chapter 108: Ivory Reprise

The Immortals left.
The circle of roots exhaled a tired creak and sank, strand by strand, into the earth until the ground swallowed it whole. Above, the curtains of silver Lightning unraveled and were gone; in their place the thunderclouds finally loosened their grip and let the rain fall.
It came steady, not fierce—soft enough to hush the last echoes, heavy enough to claim the field. The downpour patted ash-dark soil and broken stone, beading on torn turf, drawing thin threads from every gouge and footprint. What remained of the battle declared itself in silence: a terrain chewed ragged; mounds of Bat carcasses caving inward as the wet sank their wings; red streams wriggling everywhere, veining the ground in slick, branching paths.
Water pooled in blade-scored hollows, mirrored the low, bruised sky, then overflowed and joined other runnels to braid a wider course. The blood darkened as it mixed, pink at the edges, wine at the heart, tracing every slope and seam the fight had torn. Shattered roots peered from the mud like snapped ribs. Stones lay cracked, faces blackened, edges still whispering of heat the rain could not quite steal.
The air was thick with it—the tang of iron, the sweet rot of spent flesh, a faint ghost of ozone where the Lightning had hung like a curtain moments before. Each breath tasted of metal and wet fur. The rain kept writing the same sentence, drop after drop, until the field was a page of smeared color and drowned noise.
Nothing moved now but water.
The day pressed on, gray and patient, and the storm washed the story of the fight toward the low places where all things settle.
For a time the mortals lingered where the storm had rinsed the field, talking in low clumps as rain threaded their hair and sleeves. The Cultivators of the Ten-Thousand Beast Mountain were gone, but the shape of their passing still pressed on voices and faces; talk came out careful, quick, and half-swallowed, the way people speak when power might be listening from a nearby ditch.
Business cracked the hush first. The merchants—counting weather, daylight, and lost time with the same steady eye—snapped orders. Guards tightened straps and checked wheels; the hired mercenaries kicked mud from their boots and formed up. Drivers clucked to restless beasts. Canvas shook, ropes creaked, and the caravan began to roll toward the next destination, slow at first, then with the practiced rhythm of people who have survived by arriving on schedule.
When the last wagon slipped past the torn ground, only villagers were left at the edge of the ruin. Their voices shrank to hushed whispers, each word weighed and tucked behind teeth. Eyes slid, then slid away. The men of the Qi Clan stood apart beneath their umbrellas and straw hats, posture stiff, chin-lines high—
so
proper it read as pride no matter the angle. Side-glances gathered like crows along a fence: guarded, measuring, unwilling to invite trouble but unwilling to pretend the air was clean.
No one said the Qi were “swell with ego.” They didn’t need to. The silence carried it well enough.
The campsite felt hollowed out—doom and gloom soaked as deep as the rain. Yan Jia wept into Ippo’s arms, sniffling, breath hitching against his chest. At the creek’s edge, Yan Ru stood unmoving, staring into the brown rush of water as it shouldered past stones. His silence said nothing, but his white-knuckled grip on the raw handle of the incomplete Spiritual Treasure Daemon had forged and gifted him said everything about the anger he bottled tight.
Kirin was no longer fifty-plus meters of sky-eating wings; the Soul-Snatcher Eagle had shrunk to less than two meters, watching in stillness from its perch atop the tallest tree. In the tent’s mouth, Kyra and Kira sheltered from the rain, the tigress and her growing cub sprawled on their sides, yawning, their bodies blocking the entrance like a living door.
“What are we going to do?” Yan Jia finally lifted her head. She searched Ippo’s face—a perfect match for the one she’d lost in looks, and a complete mismatch in the person behind it, missing that flare of mystery that had always pulled her like a magnet.
Her brother turned from the creek to the diligent student he’d taught with genuine care, waiting for Ippo’s answer.
Ippo’s arms tightened, fierce and possessive.
If only this could last. If only Daemon stayed locked in that Sect forever and she stayed with me…
The thought glowed hot and ugly; he crushed it.
Say it and you lose her. Think it and you endanger everything.
“We follow Daemon’s plan,” he said. “There’s nothing else for us to do here. If they dare harm him, then it’s Master’s issue to settle with the people of the Ten-Thousand Beast Mountain. If they throw him in a dungeon and keep him locked somewhere… then it’s on us to free him one day.”
He looked to the Swordsman. “Either way, we’re leaving. We’re underprepared to rescue Daemon, and unprepared to meet my Master. Go ask Auntie Fan if she’ll let little Mei come with us. Ask Auntie Ming and Xia if she's coming, too. And make sure they understand—staying here will only force them to live under the Qi Clan’s harassment.”
Ippo rubbed Jia’s cheek with his thumb, patted her back, then lifted his eyes to the rain-dark horizon. “Either way, our time here is up. Onward to the next safe spot where we regroup and grow our strength before the next step.”
Elder Ping flew a few meters above the rain-glossed ground, keeping pace with little Song—her Beast-Companion—as it bore their captive along. The boy hung sealed inside the colorful orb of her Talisman, a marble-bright prison that turned the gray day to shifting paint across his silhouette.
I almost lost hope of getting this result so cleanly,
she admitted to herself, eyes on the sphere’s sheen.
He turned into a meat grinder for my Bats…
The memory of wings shredding and falling in sheets crossed her mind like a shadow.
Luckily, his fierceness was short-lived. Those six fights with the Inner Sect Disciples drained him—endurance, focus, everything. If I had stepped in before them…
She let the thought finish itself.
…my loss would have been the headline.
Below, the six young men and four girls loped through wet grass and churned earth, executing their Movement Techniques with disciplined breath to keep pace under the low flight. Mud splashed. Sleeves clung. No one fell behind.
Ping Xueling angled a glance down through her lashes. The rain had washed their faces honest—no swagger, just grit. She could see a particular brightness there, the steady glow of fighting spirit that doesn’t shout.
Good. This was valuable for all of you. It ground down the sharp edge of ego… and sharpened the dulled edge of ambition.
They looked, at last, like Junior Cultivators should—backs straight, chins level, silence held for work rather than wounded pride. She raised her Fan and hid a small smile behind the black silk as she watched them. No one talked trash about the prisoner. No one aired the old bile of frustration. Most of them wore the quiet mind of people already planning how to get back at him on the proper stage.
Good enough to show the geezers next,
she thought, amused, and let little Song draw the orb a touch higher through the rain. The path home lay clear; the lesson learned lay clearer.
How long has it been?
Lethargy pooled in every limb, a dull heaviness that felt stitched into his bones. Thousands of tiny wounds prickled along his skin—the memory of fangs, the throb of scores of sealed bites.
Whatever they pumped into me… venom, soporific, something to keep the body quiet.
His fingers twitched and went still again, the effort too expensive for what it bought.
At least Asura’s Buff didn’t demand movement. Ending it was a thought, nothing more. He let the command fall inward—clean, final—and his giant Second-Form unraveled. Mass folded; the extra heads and arms blurred, thinned, and faded like smoke as his frame settled back to its normal size.
This time, the aftershock hit different.
He could feel the empty places—the scraped bowl where Stamina should have been, the dimmed hum where Mana had burned too long. This was the first time he had pushed Asura’s Buff so far—held the First-Form, then climbed into Second-Form, and kept them both alive past reason. His muscles ached with a slow, soaked-in fatigue; his breath came shallow not from pain, but from a tiredness that started somewhere deeper and refused to be argued with.
So that’s the bill.
Every Skill he’d thrown had taken its slice of Mana; every moment of borrowed strength had drawn blood from Stamina by degrees he hadn’t respected in the heat. The math was ugly, but it was honest, and his body was done negotiating.
Rest. Now.
No plans, no angles, no maps. Just the blunt clarity of a single need. The world could wait a few hours—or a lifetime. He shut his eyes and let the heaviness have him, promising himself only this: decisions after sleep.
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