Backlash Part 1

Chapter 129: Lotus Blooms in Battle

In class instructors had spoken of important battles. They sometimes recounted the number of lives lost, or noted the strategies that had been employed by the victors. It was such a dry and abstract way to talk about battle. It did nothing to instill Jiang Yanli with the sense of what it would have actually been like to stand amidst those scenes. Large impressive numbers of soldiers and death counts were senseless and empty. Jiang Yanli could look at those numbers and feel a vague sadness. It was a large number of lives, and that warranted a trace of regret over their loss.

Stories perhaps would offer something closer to reality, but as a soft spoken young lady such stories were generally not shared with Jiang Yanli. Of course Jiang Yanli could have sought out such stories. Truthfully Jiang Yanli had never considered looking for stories of battle. The closest she had ever been to a battle was one or two competitive hunts she had attended. She had not particularly enjoyed watching these hunts and politely declined future invitations to attend them. Most cultivators should have at least engaged in genuine fights during night hunts. Jiang Yanli would be one of the exceptions to this rule. Her cultivation was so poor that Jiang Yanli never participated in any night hunts herself.

For these reasons Jiang Yanli found herself wholly unprepared for what unfolded after the barrier was breached. Arrows rained from the sky. Jiang Yanli vaguely felt she had heard that description somewhere, but her mind had never before comprehended what that meant. It was almost like a thunderstorm had erupted. Arrows as numerous as rain drops made up a terrifying deluge. They embedded themselves in the ground, the buildings, and blindly pierced the people of Lotus Pier. No rainstorm had ever been so terrifying as seeing the sky filled with a descending swarm of arrows.

Jiang Yanli had seen most of this unfolding from a distance. She was standing far back from the main fighting. Their evacuation route could not have been in a better location. Obscured from passing glances, unless you got close enough to peak between buildings you'd never see the people lined up in clusters waiting to run across the water on their enchanted path. You could not get further away from the invading forces. It was as though the evacuation route was designed with perfect awareness of where the enemy would enter.

Jiang Yanli hoped to help guide retreating disciples to the evacuation route. She hoped to see her family move towards the evacuation route. Jiang Yanli knew they would be among the last to evacuate. It made her proud and terrified. Those who evacuated last would be the most likely to die. Jiang Yanli wasn't a fool. From the distance the flood of cultivators engaged in battle was like an ocean. The red and white robes of the QishanWen sect were far more numerous than the regal purples of the YunmengJiang sect.

The sound of metal striking metal punctuated a noisy haze of shouting voices. The air was filled with a sharp metallic odour mixed with the acrid scent of smoke. The air was thick with the combined stench and Jiang Yanli felt like she might choke. Nothing in Jiang Yanli's memory could compare to the scene of chaos before her. Certainly nothing she had ever seen compared to the horror she felt when her eyes briefly managed to untangle the chaotic images into something she could comprehend. Jiang Yanli could only focus on small pieces at a time.

Her eyes focused on a building, with flaming arrows still embedded in its pillars. It should have erupted into flames, but the building was only lightly scorched. There was a fizzling sound, like rain on a dying fire. Strange, there was no rain falling from the sky. Even more strange, the building had yet to be engulfed in a spreading fire. There was a small flicker of warmth in Jiang Yanli's heart.

'A-Xian? Who but A-Xian would add protections to their home without telling anyone?' Jiang Yanli almost smiled.

Almost against her will, Jiang Yanli's eyes were drawn back to the chaos of the fighting that had been creeping ever closer. Her eyes would focus in on the crossing swords of two cultivators. Then her eyes would be drawn to the swift movement of a QishanWen cultivator decapitating a YunmengJiang disciple. Almost against her will, Jiang Yanli's eyes followed the decapitated head as it hit the ground and rolled to a stop next to the bodies of two other cultivators. One corpse dressed in purple, the other in white and red, both of them young enough that they might not even be considered adults yet. If they were twenty years old they were barely so. They would never be a day older now. Their blood had spread in a tacky pool around their corpses.