Blossoming Path-253. Cut From the Roots

Blossoming Path-253. Cut From the Roots

The three Envoys did not move.
They stood like statues; cold, unblinking, the storm behind the stillness. But the cultists did.
A dozen of them broke from the pack, not scattering but converging. Their target wasn’t the Verdant Lotus line. Wasn’t the village.
It was
me
.
They moved fast. Faster than they had a right to. Like dogs loosed from a leash, gnashing their teeth with glee.
I stepped forward, arm outstretched to shove Elder Ming behind me, already preparing to meet the charge. Flame pooled in my palm. My stance shifted.
But I wasn’t the one who met them.
A blur of white and a shimmer of blue cut the field in half.
Windy shot past me like a bolt, tail lashing with enough force to shatter stone. One cultist fell mid-run. Another had his leg swept from under him, a yelp of pain dying in his throat as Tianyi descended from above, her wings cutting down like guillotines.
But they weren’t fast enough to stop them all.
Three cultists slipped past the chaos; bodies low, teeth bared, blades in hand. I moved to intercept.
And then I saw the sword.
A flash of steel. Sharp. Precise. Without hesitation.
Jian Feng stepped between me and the cultists like a shadow come alive, his blade moving in vicious arcs. One strike took the man’s fingers. The next, his life. A third cultist lunged at him; only to have a sword pierce through his eye socket before his feet left the ground.
This wasn’t the same Jian Feng I knew. His movements had once held the softness of a taoist. Measured. Hesitant. Always a half-step short of killing.
Now his sword was an instrument of violence. A butcher’s hook. His qi hummed with cold, deliberate fury. Every cut he made was a death sentence.
Behind him, the other Verdant Lotus disciples surged forward. Showing power beyond that of a regular second-class disciple.
They weren’t soft anymore either.
Their stances had changed; no more open-palmed redirects or dancing deflections. Their blades aimed for soft tissue. Throats. Eyes. Tendons. Blood flowed where it had once been avoided.
"Stay back, Kai!" Jian Feng barked, his gaze never leaving the front. His voice was steady—but under it, a simmering rage burned. “They’re coming for you."
I turned away. I bit my lips so hard they bled, but focused on the most important task at hand.
“Retreat!” I shouted, raising my voice until it cracked through the noise. “Get as far back as you can! We don’t need to win—just survive!”
That was all it took.
The villagers began to move.
Some fled at once. Others hesitated, clutching bundles of herbs or dragging younger siblings by the arm. But Elder Ming’s voice sliced through their panic, rallying the crowd into order. Horses screamed in the distance. Hooves hit earth. The retreat had begun in earnest.
I didn’t wait to see if they made it far. I ran.
I sprinted toward the fray; not the center, but the edges. A woman, one of the refugees we freed from the Red Maw's hideout, tripped near the far field. I caught her before she hit the ground, pushed her forward with one hand while hurling a vial with the other. It struck a cultist in the temple; didn’t kill him, but the blinding smoke that burst out of it stalled his momentum long enough for Windy to crash into him from the side.
Then a boy screamed behind me. I twisted, yanked him out of a collapsing cart, and flung another elixir; this time a sludge-like brew that hardened mid-air and latched onto a charging enemy’s leg, anchoring him in place.
I couldn’t be everywhere.
No matter how fast I moved, how many concoctions I threw, how many villagers I supported… The battlefield was too wide.
The cultists were spilling around our lines, slipping through weak points like rot through old wood.
I saw Yu Long among them, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the others, as he held the line with sheer will. Then a cultist broke through the wall and sent Yu Long flying with a backhand swipe.
The path to the villagers opened like a wound.
“No—STOP!” I screamed, already pushing my legs forward. Qi surged through me. My body responded before thought could catch up.
But I was too slow.
The cultist shot toward the fleeing villagers like a hunting dog, ignoring me completely.
And then—
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A blur. A flash of silver.
Two halves hit the ground before I even processed the motion.
A red spray hung in the air like mist.
I blinked.
And saw Ren Zhi.
Kneeling beside the villager the cultist had nearly reached, helping them to their feet. Gently. Almost kindly. Whispering something I couldn’t hear as he pointed them down the path to safety.
The cane in his hand was no longer a cane.
It was a hook sword. The shaft of it straightened, the curved edge gleaming faintly in the low light, wet with blood.
He wasn’t even looking at the corpse behind him.
Just ushering the survivor forward.
The old man who once wandered the village square now stood like an executioner at the crossroads between death and escape.
He turned slightly, as if aware I was watching. The wind brushed his robes.
"I'll help. Focus on what you can do."
The tremble in his hands wasn’t there anymore.
But he didn’t step forward.
Somehow, I knew that wherever the cultists slipped through, wherever the line broke, Ren Zhi would be waiting. To eliminate anything that made it past us.
And that was more than I could ask for.
I turned back to the field.
And it hit me.
Despite the sheer number of people in Gentle Wind, the number of cultivators among us was few. Fewer than I wanted to admit. Most here were civilians—skilled, yes, resilient, absolutely—but not trained for war. The cultists? Maybe three dozen in number. But every one of them was a killer. Warped, corrupted, relentless.
We were outnumbered two to one.
And worse, those three Envoys still hadn’t moved.
I grit my teeth and scanned the line, breaking my thoughts into multiple streams to comprehend everything faster.
Xu Ziqing was everywhere at once, impossible to pin down. He moved like a shadow given steel, each step baiting enemies into openings they didn’t realize they’d walked into until it was too late. His sword invited mistakes. Then punished them.
Tianyi was pure chaos.
I saw her wings flick once and five cultists were knocked off their feet, turbulence rippling through their ranks. She blurred from place to place, faster than they could follow. Her fists broke bones, and her wings severed tendons.
Windy tore through their formation like a storm in a grain field. His tail cracked like a whip, forcing the cultists to stagger back, and in that confusion, they struck each other more than they struck him. Darting, weaving, always just beyond reach, always pulling them apart.
Han Chen and Yu Long stood back-to-back, their breathing heavy now. I saw blood on Yu Long’s jaw, claw marks across Han Chen’s forearm. Their martial style was failing them here. The more they let themselves get hit, the closer the rot of the cultists’ corruption spread into them.
I couldn’t let that happen. I rushed forward as a cultist lunged at Yu Long from the side.
I moved faster.
My palm met the cultist’s strike mid-air, redirecting the claws a hairsbreadth off target. I dropped low, ducked under the return swing, and drove a flaming palm into his chest.
The man convulsed. His chest lit up with searing heat, the Heavenly Mantra Flame imprint burning straight through his corrupted robes. He dropped, twitching, his mouth foaming as the fire cooked the rot from the inside.
"Here!" I snapped, tossing a small red pill behind me without looking.
Yu Long caught it. So did Han Chen. Both of them wordlessly popped it into their mouths and steadied their stances again.
I didn’t have time to explain it was a stamina recovery pill. One infused with so much yang energy that it'd slow the corruption of the cultist attacks.
Didn’t matter.
They needed to be in peak condition. These monsters weren’t slowing down.
And neither could we.
I surged forward, just long enough to give them space to breathe.
The moment I stepped near the front, every head turned.
Not just those near me. Even ones locked in combat suddenly twisted their necks mid-swing; eyes zeroing in on mine like I was the only thing on the battlefield worth killing. A chill dragged down my spine.
They didn’t even speak.
Jian Feng noticed too. His stance changed subtly, drawing nearer to me, blade flicking upward in a tight guard. On my other side, Han Chen cursed under his breath and slid into a low horse stance, one foot scraping a crescent into the dirt.
Cultists ignored open attacks, took blows straight to the ribs or legs just to lunge toward me. Their eyes gleamed with the same sick hunger I remembered in the forest. They didn’t care if they died as long as they reached me.
I grit my teeth and slammed my hands together.
Shennong’s Decree.
I issued the command not with words, but with will:
'Entrap them!'
I didn’t know if it would work. Not at this range. Not against this many.
But the earth around us stirred. My qi drained in a rush.
The grass lengthened, tendrils rising not like plants but like predators, weaving toward their prey.
Roots snagged their ankles. Grass curled like cords around wrists mid-swing. Weeds thickened and yanked them backward, tripping, halting, binding.
The line held. Jian Feng and Han Chen pressed forward, carving into the sudden pause. I grabbed a wounded disciple by the arm; she was clutching her ribs, blood soaking her robe. I pulled her behind the line to treat her wounds, my hands blurring as I applied salves and pushed a pill to her lips.
The tide was shifting again.
And just when I felt we had a breath—
“Sister.”
It came from the heavily-scarred Envoy, his tone expectant.
The woman raised her head slowly. I’d been too focused on the cultists to truly watch her before.
Now I did.
She tilted her head back, casting her gaze toward us. It held a deep disdain towards us; as though we had grievously sinned just for existing within herpresence.
“On it.”
Her robes dragged behind her. Then, with deliberate grace, she dropped to her knees beside the corpse of a fallen Verdant Lotus disciple—the one they had thrown earlier to demoralize us.
I flinched. But I couldn’t look away.
She dipped her fingers into the open wound of her chest cavity. Slowly. Reverently. Scooping up viscera like it was ink.
Then, without expression, she smeared the blood across her cheeks in twin lines.
I felt the bile rise in my throat.
Then she began to sing.
It was soft. Sweet, even. A lullaby sung by a mother to her child. Her voice curled like smoke, too gentle for the battlefield, slipping into the cracks between sound. The moment the first verse left her lips—
I staggered.
Not from a strike. Not from qi. But something worse.
A chill wrapped itself around my heart, and my vision blurred.
The battlefield didn’t vanish. But it shifted; the colors dulled, the shapes warped, and the sounds took on a hollow echo. I blinked. And I was no longer standing in Gentle Wind Village.
I was in Pingyao.
The ruins were on fire. Screams echoed in the distance. Bodies covered the beaten path.
Ping Hai stood in front of me.
“Why didn’t you save me?” he asked, voice flat. “You could’ve.”
I staggered back. “
No—
”
Behind him, the refugees I failed to rescue emerged from the smoke. Faces sunken, eyes accusing.
“You said you would protect us.”
“You watched us die.”
I shook my head violently, clenching my fists. Fog filled my mind like oil in water, every thought slipping from my grasp. Even my connection with Tianyi and Windy felt far away.
And then I saw the faces of those I’d killed.
Bandits. Cultists. People who once had names.
One of them smiled.
“You’re no different than us.”
I screamed.
Manifold Memory Palace.
I dove inward into the halls of thought where illusion could not follow. The world slowed. Fractured. I walked the pathways of memory, grabbing hold of each hallucination, identifying the falsehoods, and breaking them.
My real memories, Ping Hai’s final words, the desperation of the refugees, the battle against the Red Maw... they overwrote the lies. Each was grieved already. Each was borne already. I had no time to relive them.
I surfaced again.
And found chaos.
The battlefield was frozen.
Verdant Lotus disciples stood like statues. Some knelt. Others covered their ears and wept. A few were screaming at things I couldn’t see.
Jian Feng was standing, but only barely. A talisman, likely from Cheng's stash, was fused to the back of his hand, hissing against his skin. His face was slick with sweat, his body trembling—but his eyes remained alert.
Tianyi and Windy were unaffected. Her wings flared and his tail spun, pushing back cultists who had seized the chance to press forward after breaking past their bindings.
Xu Ziqing still fought, but blood stained his shoulder, his defense faltering under the sheer number of attackers.
I had to do something.
I couldn’t brew a dozen doses of medicine. I couldn’t cure every mind on the battlefield one by one.
But I had one thing.
I reached into my satchel.
The Calming Lotus concoction. The one to still one's mind, and even slow their qi circulatory systems to a standstill.
To still the heart. Cleanse the spirit. An antidote for internal storms. Like the one we faced now.
I dropped to one knee and opened the vial.
Then pulled out two more ingredients; the Skyreach Flower and lichen-coptis fusion. The same components I used to turn my cure for the Amethyst Plague airborne. I extracted their essence and poured them into the vial, heating my palm to speed up the refinement process.
My Refinement Simulation covered my vision, projecting the reaction, the spread, the conversion from liquid to gas.
I needed reach.
“Tianyi!” I shouted. Although her eyes never strayed from the wave of cultists, I could feel our bond pulse in acknowledgement. I focused my thoughts and communicated my instructions.
'Wings. Once I throw this—beat them hard. Create an updraft. Clear line of sight.'
She nodded. Her antennae flicked. She understood.
But cultists were rushing to intercept.
I turned, reaching for a pill in reflex. But the two closest to me lost their heads, falling over in a spray of blood.
The jingle of a bell sang through the air as the cultists gave pause, mostly in shock at the sight of their comrades being bisected out of nowhere.
Ren Zhi stood there, robes rippling, both hook swords drawn now. The wind whipped at his feet like a serpent.
He didn’t look at me.
He stepped forward, and the storm followed.

253. Cut From the Roots