Eternal Emerald Dragon

Lind was unconscious for days. He had forced through the tiniest connection to his old Authority and forced the First to act. It had broken his meridians and nearly fractured his foundation but it neatly side stepped the trap.

The Bastard was afraid of the First. The instant that massive black arm had clawed inside, the feeling of Fiend Qi had vanished entirely. The Fiend had fled rather than brush up against that power.

When he awoke groggily, he felt like he had gone back in time. A snowy and rocky plain stretched out before him as people fought and died in war.

Ash gray figures with grotesque perfect beauty took any opening to strike their army. All it took was a blade, a finger nail, or some kind of injury on bare skin to begin the process. Eternal Realm cultivators were not so easy to kill, yet a constant wave of attacks was too much.

A little over half of his original army remained.

His wives were doing the best with only Fey outdoing them but they had protected him while he recovered. As soon as he was up, they became hell on 2 legs for all the thralls.

Still, it was like an endless tide.

No matter how many Fiends they destroyed or burnt up, more replaced them. Lind realized the Bastard must have learned from their own battle.

There was nothing more terrifying than an enemy that even death could not stop. However he was doing it, the Bastard had prepared the current situation like everything else.

It was to wear down and winnow his enemies until he could sweep in and consume them all. Yet, there was no simple answer this time.

Artifacts and traps can be avoided or neutralized in various ways, but open battle had no clear answer aside from total domination.

His emerald flames were effective to a point but it seemed there was now a resistance building up as time passed. Where he could once wipe out thousands, now only a few hundred fell.

The other purpose was revealed! The Bastard was examining and adapting to his harmony! Lind began to resort to straight combat or pure elemental attacks.

It was still effective but now the stalemate was ever so slowly tilting in the Fiend's favor!

[They are only Divine Realm Fiends, how are we losing?!] Bloodsight roared in all their heads as he tore another thrall apart with his bare hands. His particular skills were highly effective as the Fiends had little resistance to blood manipulation.

A silver fist slammed out of the sky to squash dozens more as a bloodied but laughing Shattering Fist Eternal appeared.

[What they lack in strength, they make up for in numbers and cunning!] His satisfaction irked some but they had no time to argue with them.

Lind knew both were right. Ordinarily, a sea of Divine Realm cultivators, even at the Master Tier, should be just fodder against even a single Eternal Realm. What everyone kept forgetting was it was not a Divine Realm cultivator army they were facing.

It was an Eternal Fiend pulling the strings always! His mind could keep up with their speed and tactics. Shattering Fist was right about the cunning as the only purpose of the thralls were as a vehicle to extract life force.

So long as the supply of thralls lasted, the Bastard would just keep throwing them at them.

Lind tried to sever the connections but the proximity proved an issue. The Bastard was too close to easily break the connections at all. He had clearly faced such a tactic before.

Shoti and Chu tried to lure the thralls into kill zones but his family was actively isolated or avoided to prevent bringing their full power to bear.

The only one, in fact, the thralls struggled against was Annabelle. Her illusions were just impossible to detect once enacted. She also was a nightmare for such a terrain as snow misted in the air with blood and wind.

She was able to trick several thousand thralls into several kill zones but she was just one woman. The battlefield was too massive to cover it all.

Lind was currently covered in blood and healing injuries as he looked at the chaos.

Time had become meaningless yet it was turning against them. The thralls were ever so slowly pulling ahead and pushing them back. If the current trend continued, they would all die.

Lind racked his mind for any idea when a crazy idea came to him.

The thralls were protected against severing, but what about capture? He quickly relayed to Ethry that he needed a few moments.

It was an insane idea but thralls were different from true Fiends. They were little better than living puppets lacking individual will. They were not using any Arts or skills at all save the life force extraction and healing.

Those were intrinsic skills of any Fiend.

Lind had never thought to learn how the process worked but he had studied a Mystery that would allow him to appropriate them!

The Tapestry of life was easily sensed. He could see the connections and bonds between all in his army. Some were stronger than others but he was looking for something else.

He felt sweat soaking his robes with his blood. Was it impossible? Was he simply grasping at straws?

He could also try a wide range attack and risk being attacked directly if there was a trap waiting for him to strike. That was a highly likely scenario given his enemy.

He kept trying to find what he was looking for but the thralls seemed to have no connection at all.

His mind froze at that thought. No connection at all? Nothing? His emerald eyes opened and he looked at the bloody battlefield. His Tapestry ability would not exclude Fiends even at the height of a war.

In fact, there should be active connections right now, yet there was nothing.

"Bastard really is clever." Just as Lind was careful not to leave too obvious of an opening, the Fiend was doing the same. The thralls were literal fodder against him with no chance of leading back to the puppetmaster.

No wonder he could not find what he was looking for. The connection to the Bastard was not a true bond. It was just an inscription put on the body.

"I have made my life difficult." He changed tactics. Rather than looking to take over something, he made something himself. His aura surged and thin threads exploded outwards.

They were neither Qi nor harmony. He was creating a network of connections all on his own. It was also very damned hard!

His targets were constantly moving, not truly alive, and intentionally isolated by the Bastard. Still, there was no attack nor any normal warning.

He sat in the lotus position as a storm of connections were made. It felt so slow yet it took only a few breaths to succeed. Once complete he felt a vile and suppressive sensation flow back to him.

Unlike the poor Sacred Heart Eternal, there was no screaming nor despair. It was just thousands of tiny pieces of his enemy.

{Oh? I can sense you but not find you. What have you done?} The voice he despised suddenly thundered in his mind. Lind said nothing. He was focusing on his next step.

He tried to pull on the newly minted connections to see if he could stop them. Nothing really happened but the coordination did drop dramatically. He was doing something and it completely reversed the momentum of the war.

The Eternal Realm cultivators did not miss their chance to decimate their enemies.

{Annoying, but ultimately useless. How much longer can you all go? You have to recover your own dantians as there is nothing to draw in. Further, how do you leave the current battlefield?} Amusement laced the Bastard's voice.

LInd smiled in silence as he followed the connections until he found what he needed. He exerted a lot of energy at a point deep inside one of the distant mountains. All the thralls froze temporarily as the Bastard was caught off guard.

Prismatic flames and other area attacks did not miss their chance. The entire thrall force was wiped out or as good as. Further, the ground began to dissolve as the plain they stood on was falling apart.

The special realm could not hold together now that Lind had broken the anchors.

A scream of frustration flittered on the edges of his mind but Lind only smiled wider before he nearly passed out. The Tapestry was more about understanding rather than using it to control others.

Lind could really only get it to work due to the fact they were not truly alive. The same trick would not work on a real living army.

As the realm broke down completely, they were randomly dropped back into a large hall. It was more dark metal but there were several doors, tables, and chairs in a well lit setup. They were all exhausted.

Lind saw the truth of the Bastard's words. They had come in thinking they could corner the Bastard but the wave after wave of traps, decoys, and thralls, the odds of victory were dropping.

Worse, there was no retreat. The tear into the hull was gone and they were in a pristine hall. They could only keep going.

The war was on once more.

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