Man-made Disaster
At Rotten Mud Mountain, fifteen or sixteen year old Ni Jian fights a mature brown bear his grandfather Ni Kun staged as an opponent. The bear’s charge carries incredible explosive strength, and Ni Jian dodges it with movement Gu as the bear crashes into a tree, snapping it. His sword qi Gu only shaves the bear’s fur, since wild Gu has hardened its hide into plates, and the bear, completely uninjured, turns back on him. So Ni Jian can only dodge. Agile and experienced, he keeps the bear crashing into trees while he evades. Ni Kun laughs from the branches and asks whether he sees sword qi Gu’s weakness now, that it pierces and wastes primeval essence for no damage once countered, then tosses down muddy Gu. ch. 1034
Catching it nearly costs him a bite, and though the worm is Ni Kun’s he names it at sight and uses it freely. Fed primeval essence, it turns the soil under the bear to soft mud, and the beast struggles intensely each time but sinks deeper. Ni Jian traps it across three uses, first at the feet, then the waist, finally the head alone exposed, and wins, his primeval essence nearly spent. Landing beside him, Ni Kun asks if he now sees the Gu’s worth. Ni Jian accuses him of staging the whole fight to push him off sword path onto Ni clan’s earth path specialty, and Ni Kun confirms he wants that focus. Ni Jian refuses, saying he likes sword qi and finds earth path lame, and Ni Kun is about to scold him when the clan’s alert bell Gu rings from the mountain’s base. Ni Kun grabs Ni Jian and races to the village wall at rank five speed, leaving him queasy from the deceleration. ch. 1034
At the wall, clan elders greet Ni Kun, Ni clan’s current leader and a rank five Gu Master, who demands why the alert rang so many times. An elder’s investigative Gu formation shows him a beast tide a hundred li off, stranger for coming so soon after the clan survived one only a year before. The beast groups near the village are also too few to form a tide at all. Elders argue between sending elite Gu Masters to investigate and defending outright, uncertain the village can survive a tide this large. The clan leader calls it a life and death situation, an attack on a scale unseen in decades. Ni Kun orders all three layers of defense: the heavenly fire Gu formation under the second and third elders, the medicine hall under the sixth, and the transportation Gu formation checked by the seventh to evacuate the youths if needed. The elders scatter at once to act. ch. 1034
The beast tide arrives mixing wolves, tigers, leopards, bulls, deer, foxes, snakes and other kinds, a combination Ni Jian has never seen, and immense fear crosses his face. A tide normally carries one species only. Ni Kun wonders aloud why the beasts do not turn on each other, and then the tide slows, gathers into one enormous group, and halts ten thousand steps from the wall, watching the village. Ni clan’s Gu Masters exchange uncertain, fearful looks. A mound tiger, a mutated beast with a huge body far larger than normal, steps forward carrying Fang Yuan, who lies watching the clan with half open eyes. Seeing him, Ni clan’s Gu Masters shout in shock. Ni Jian understands the beast tide is a man-made disaster, not a natural one. ch. 1034
