When his Dantian hatched and consumed him, to the very end he had thought he was ascending to a higher state of existence.

Jade Dragon had inherited his progenitor’s hatred of the Powered, and his thirst for power. He had killed hundreds of them; young, old, powerful, weak, it did not matter. They were to be deprived of the strength they had not earned, so arbitrarily given to some and not others, and rendered down into pills to make the truly deserving strong.

His power, coupled with the inherited discipline he had gained from his weak and foolish progenitor, had rapidly risen to levels far beyond that of the other Daoists who had sprung up and rapidly began to seize power. It took the idiots gifted by Heaven too long to realize what was happening. When the Daoists finally turned from opposing the undead to removing the infection that was the Powered, they had died in glorious droves, and their arbitrarily-bestowed strength had gone to the true inheritors of the world.

He was a great leader among his kind, one of the oldest and wisest, having discerned many secrets of the Dao, and passed on some lesser enlightenments to those who followed him. His skill in Formations was particularly great, and had helped him pass two of the Tribulations meant to erase him from existence. It would defy this bombardment of his Sect with ease.

More Powered, crawling out of their little rat holes in that pathetic island they had fled to, come to exact vengeance? He sneered inside as he watched the weak die, feeling them wink out of existence, while the strong were conscripted to help power the Formation that would keep them safe.

Soon enough these impure things tainted by Heaven would run out of strength. Certainly they were displaying great power... but all hasty strength faded in time. The invaders were extremely outnumbered, and the rabble mortals only good for breeding more immortals would naturally be completely useless when it came time for his servants to mount their counterstrike.

He licked his lips as he thought of the magic being wielded by the elf-woman, and the power he would remove from her Bloodline. It would help him break through the next Level, without a doubt, and what secrets he would learn when he advanced had him almost shaking in anticipation.

Shanghai burned, but he did not care. It was but a home for mortals, and his chosen abode was untouched. If they lived in misery, that was on them; he and his were completely unaffected.

He was the Jade Dragon, standing at the forefront of the Daoist Immortals, free and unconstrained by the Heavens! The matters of mortals scrabbling in the dirt were no longer of his concern.

They were coming...

The filthy air they brought with him, stirring up the purity of the Qi, the true power of the world finally released to suppress the uncaring power of the Heavens, was easy to sense as it advanced, burning viciously at the smooth flows of Qi, disrupting the painstaking work of reclaiming this despoiled land for the true strength of existence.

Just one more reason to kill them, bringing their unclean and unrefined filth back again, making his underlings work even harder to be rid of it once again.

All things in time...

He had to admire their patience. He could feel eyes on him, but could see little in the falling rain, so thick with the cloying stench of their ‘mana’ and ‘chi’, obfuscating everything, even his divine senses. He could only sense the collapse of the Qi in the surroundings as it was contaminated once again, and watch the dance of the lightning coming down, as fast and furious as anything a Tribulation coughed up...

He wanted that woman’s Power so badly he could taste it, and knew his underlings were thinking the same.

None would dare contest with him over such a prize, however. He was the Jade Dragon, after all!

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“What pretentious pricks,” Sama said, studying them, the Mask of Clarity around her eyes letting her see right through the rain, and her Null letting her completely ignore the waves of awareness the Daoists were tossing around, trying to see what was going on. It was like a bunch of invisible, warring spotlights creeping over the skin, trying to worm their way into everything.

The Daoists were holed up in their little Formation, so cute, thinking that it would save them. At a glance, there were at least two thousand of them, numbering the elite students of the Jade Dragon Sect, as well as the elders and masters of several other Schools and Sects that had fled there when their defenses were breached.

Some were on the wall, some were flying. Letting the ground soil their feet was something only for the weak, of course. All Senior Daoists rarely set foot on the ground, not that the ground wanted them touching it. Their revulsion for dust and grime was because the dust and the grime of the mortal world seriously didn’t like them, any more than the rest of Creation did.

They thought themselves above the red dust, when actually the red dust was revolted by them, and so mutual antipathy drove the entire thing... the Daoists simply couldn’t tell that was the real case, so wrapped up in their own perceptions that actually believing that Creation itself was appalled by them was of no importance. They would simply change Creation to suit them!

If that happened to kill multitudes, it was not their concern. The deaths of the weak were dictated by the strong. If you didn’t want that to happen, then you had to be strong... which made you better prey!

Vivic fires were raging over the corpses of Cultivators across the city, consuming the slimy-squicky feeling of Qi from the air, returning the world to normal. Three more Qi-forming Formations had been found and reversed by Traveler expeditiously, and were sucking in Qi from outside the city like vacuums, helped by the press of the world trying to get rid of the shit.

Alas, those Conversion Formations had been working for years, and the area contaminated by Qi had spread a great distance, indeed. The fastest way to get rid of it was still to feed a whole bunch of Cultivators to the Land. The intensity of those vivic fires, freeing up all the power they had leeched off the Land and stored up, was several times more intense than undead burning, and lasted much longer, too.

It was hard to be happy about it, however. It wasn’t making the Land any stronger, it was returning what had been torn from it and made it weaker...

“Useless shits from head to toe,” Sama muttered, and Briggs, standing next to her, nodded calmly, his own Mask up and studying the same thing. They had no Soul Essence usable here, but ki seemed to do the job well enough, once some adjustments were made. Staying in Arcane Focus helped, too.

“So, how do you want to handle them?” he asked, studying the arrogant and preening sot in the dragon crown. Eesh, what a pretentious prick, with skin like rancid milk. That milky hue of skin was now the sign of one of the greatest evils in the world. Nobody from China or Asia was ever going to associate white skin with purity and beauty ever again. The women Cultivators and their artificial, unnatural beauty was now simply a thing of horror to the common people, especially to the orcs they treated so mercilessly. If you weren’t bronzed by the sun, you looked like them, and that could actually get you ganked quickly now.

Sama considered them sitting there up in the air, aloofly surveying all they commanded, certain they were safe, that they would choose the moment to strike and counterattack.

“I want them to tremble,” she said in a guttural voice, and Briggs smiled, looking down behind him, where a whole bunch of new Sevens who had just become Forsaken were waiting. Many others among them were holding old guns, lovingly maintained over decades, hidden away from the Daoists in graves and holes, inside walls, among junk and dirt. Those wielding them often had grey hair and mottled skin, and eyes that had seen the Daoists prey on all their friends, family, and children, and had nothing left but vengeance to look forwards to.

Their firearms were old, but perfectly serviceable, especially after Traveler zipped by and Mended them up to pristine shape. Layer on Greater Magic Weapon, Bane Weapon, and Endless Ammo, and those guns were ready to speak, and do so repeatedly.

There were hundreds of these men, perhaps only a tithe of the fallen population of the city, but still significant.

“Traveler,” he said aloud, but it was really over the Fellowship link, “we need Cyclonic and some E-Plumbum. Oh, and how fine is your control of the rain there?”

----------

The rain was coming down even harder, restricting their vision, and even their divine sense was getting blocked by the crackling lightning in the air and water, disrupting all but their most general awareness of the elimination of the Qi throughout the city. The Qi-Gathering Formation within the walls of his Sect was still perfectly intact, however, and could supply the defensive Formation here indefinitely, of course. The Egg of the Nine Dragons was a masterwork that no mere mortal or dupe of the Heavens could possibly breach-

The heads of two dozen Cultivators around him suddenly exploded with black and gold fire, their brains spraying out the backs of their heads. Tiny swirls of wind extended from their faces off into the distance, gone in the next instant, the zipping buzz of bullets belatedly hitting the ears nearby too late to do anything.

A second later, another two-dozen shocked Daoists floating in the air suffered the same fate, and the panic began to spread.

This, this is impossible!, Jade Dragon thought, flashing into motion, his Qi accelerating his reaction time so that he could see what was happening.

Like threads of vapor, the straight lines of the rifle shots became visible as they breached the protection of the Formation, but were lost in the falling rain beyond it. They struck with unerring accuracy, head and heartshots that ignored the natural Qi defenses of the Daoists as readily as the Formation itself, and they had none of the killing intent attached to them that should make them easy to evade or knock aside.

It was like dozens of assassins were sniping at them from outside the Formation, right through its impermeable defense, from beyond the pounding rain coming down!

Those Daoists who didn’t realize what was going on and were slow to react were the ones who fell first, fires the colors of their own blood blazing on punctured chests or out the back of their skulls. No clapping of the shots, no warring with the thunder and the crackling lightning that had ceased falling a minute or two ago, and which was now roiling and seething impotently in the clouds above, in hindsight obviously gathering and building for something.

The Daoists on the walls naturally ducked for cover, while those in the air began to drop down hastily, getting out of view of the snipers picking them off. Some arrogant ones started zipping around, moving too quickly for any sniper to track, unwilling to concede that beings using such weapons could actually be much of a threat to them.

Their heads began to move right into the paths of incoming bullets, as if they were presenting themselves to be shot. The stunned disbelief in their eyes as their brains blew out stayed with them as they plummeted from the skies.

Jade Dragon only had to see that happen twice before he realized that the shooters were prescient, actually firing at where they were going to be, and removed himself hastily from their line of fire...