Up above, the sky grew dark. The darkness strangely localized itself, like an effect from a path technique.

  Of course, that was where the damn threat was.

  Mood: not a fan.

  Dozens of spirit beasts were now flying into our territory. All sizes of ephemeral beasts, from smoking elementals the size of dogs to the size of horses. I am few cases I could see slower beasts the size of houses moving from the outskirts of the city.

  They moved with a purpose.

  I could sense that they were each looking for humans to deal with. I also felt a surge of dream aura from the surrounding people. I cultivated it, trying to fill my core. Dreams or nightmares both did the same thing for me.

  They filled me up. Whether with dread or hope, it mattered not matter. I was getting the job done either way.

  I hadn’t really leaned into the side of my path that recruited nightmares, but if anything, this was the time.

  There were at least five giant beasts that made manta rays descending from the heights. It at least that was their dominant shape- they were shifting like Min did. It was like they were trying to find the most nightmarish combination.

  Were I a lesser man, it would have worked.

  “Min, I think we need to work on those,” I said. “Do you have any information on them before we jump into it?”

  “Expected tier is third. They don’t look like they’re trying to fight, just feed on the locals.”

  “Well shit, that was all you had to say,” I said.

  I pointed at the spirit beasts and got Lee’s attention. If they were going to descend and try to eat people, I was going to stop them. It was at this exact moment that I realized the city was so tightly packed that any amount of fighting in or above it would be a tragedy.

  I could only do so much. Someone else would have to evacuate the people. I didn’t know where they would go, but this situation was untenable.

  “Get the Mandarin!” I said.

  I might be on the outs with the federally appointed governor, but he was a tool capable of excising these spear beasts. I wondered why he hadn’t done so already and then I saw a flash of light coming from way of North. The governor’s island was there.

  “Never mind, Min. We have to keep this area.... safe. “

  This was looking more and more like a coordinated attack. I paused in mid-air.

  “Decide, already!” Min yelled at me.

  “Some of these guys are third level? Can you take them?”

  Did they want me to go all the way out and expose myself? It seemed and more like yes. Could I hide in plain sight? If this was the Red Fang, they would look for me. Assuming that one fifth realm guy was following up from the capital, I might be toast.

  “Fuck it, we ball.” I would have to obscure myself.

  The answer was immediately obvious. I could fight veiled. Then no one around would know why the beasts were being tossed away from the city limits. To them it would just look like they were deciding to leave.

  “I can match some of them,” Min said. “But we have to figure out where they are coming from.”

  “Can we find that out? How did they get past the barrier?”

  “Does it matter? They got past the barrier. We need to get to the Kangs,” Min said.

  On the ground, I saw two pairs of nun chucks. I had little combat ability, but there was one thing they did exceedingly well. They were good focuses for my tactile telekinesis. I put one bright red one into each hand.

  Yeah, I looked like a teenager at the shopping mall, but hey don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

  That settled, I flew up.

  All the dreams and nightmares from the city were coming true. I could feel the aura sweeping up and Megan it so that other forms of energy were thick.

  It was a lot of fear and daydreaming and nightmares at that exact moment. The people were crying out. Hope was rampant. Fear was dripping from the walls.

  I took all of it. I packed it down, powering my flight as I headed into an ever shifting eldritch abomination.

  I reached the first one who would nearly reach the ground by now. As I got closer, it’s modular shape and size changed. So now it looked more like a balloon with grasping tentacles. Those all dropped to the ground, reaching for a meal.

  I was going to have to give him the bad news that we were out.

  I crashed into the side of it, and it was strangely sturdy. How much? It looked like it was an immovable, unchangeable mass. This blob of otherworldly flesh was solid.

  Good.

  I reached out to make contact and use its body as I tucked my right nun chucks into my belt.

  For the first time since using tactile telekinesisis felt. Usually I had a sense of the entire thing, but this was one of the first times that it took me a while to contact it as well as to secure it. What I realized was that it was fighting against me, tryinme,to change its shape. As soon as I realizI realized I couldge its shape, I attempted to squeeze tighter with my telekinesis.

  That proved to be the ticket to making it freak out.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  It did not want to be held in place. Heck, it didn’t want to keep a single form. It resisted me with its whole core.

  Where I had been comparatively fighting a toddler, suddenly the force of a varsity women’s throwing team hit me.

  The beast knew what was going on. It was being captured or was about to be thrown. It did not want that to happen. My initial idea of grabbing it by the long side and tossing it out of the city was not working. It would just limp back.

  Then I saw another one was friends were terrorizing one of the Eastern districts for the city. I was going to have to kill it.

  More to the point, I didn’t know how to kill it. So I pushed, trying to squeeze it to death. The beast turned white, then black, then red,red, as if signalling a sale that I was not privy to. If there was a sale on spirit beast cores, I would have wanted to know.

  There’s a certain person who decides they want to wrestle a watermelon while they’re oiled up. It was the kind of skill that you developed after being bored over the summer with your friends and having nothing better to do. It was something that you got better at when you got older.

  I finally remember seeing people do this and wondering what kind of fun was going on. Though the beast was about my size around, I gave it a go. The one time I tried the watermelon grease trick came back to me; I recalled trying it once. It felt slippery.

  The memory of rescuing my daughters from running headfirst into the pool also came to me. Odd thing to think about while I was fighting for my life, but whatever it takes.

  This watermelon shaped beast was my current problem.

  I was struggling to control it, and then it launched me.

  No arms, no legs, just pure force punched me through a third-floor walk-up window. I didn’t even see an appendage.

  I went through another door to the terrified shrieks of the inhabitants. Two little girls and an an older man huddled in a corner.

  “You might want to get down,” I said, brushing debris off of my chest as I got up.

  In my surprise, I had dropped one of the two nunchaku. Well shit. I just needed them to focus my flight on, otherwise I would have to focus on my clothes.

  It had two sides, though.

  I extended it and grabbed it on both sides. The man and the girls looked hopeful.

  “If you can get to the ground floor, do it,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said.

  I couldn’t do much for them. Well, much except close the distance.

  I gave them one last look. I couldn’t do anything for them right now, but my heart ached.

  “You got this Joe,” I said, connecting to my sandals and my nun chucks to hover and then gently took off. It felt good. I had practiced this little maneuver many times.

  This time, the beast extended eyes above and was clearly watching. Beyond it, I could see Xueyie tangling with one on a rooftop in the next neighborhood. Her family was with her.

  That gave me an idea. I flew into my target and then pushed him. They were on the opposite side. I just needed to steer a little.

  It proved difficult, but not impossible. I was cycling aura and turning it into qi as fast as I ever had in the moment. Apparently, the nightmare was going to be something special.

  I knew that should be emotional, but I was just feeling emotionally stunted at the moment. I use that, pushing the qi into my body, reinforcing my muscles as I desperately pushed it. This demonic thing most resembled an overlord from StarCraft, or at least that was as close as I could get to an idea of what they were when they weren’t flailing about between positions.

  I was going to use it to get my friends out of danger. I was also going to use their skills to destroy mine if that could. Both of her parents were strong cultivators, though I didn’t think they had a combat focus. Either way, I have them in my sites.

  I had the image in my mind of a balloon comically losing its shit as it got pushed into a live fire range.

  It didn’t look like a balloon as much as it was one. What really was it? An eldritch horror that would grow to be one of my most favorite nightmares was my best guess.

  I got into range of them. Finally, one of them noticed me. Xueyie’s father, who I forgot the of name of, looked the part of the smiling Buddha as always. I really needed to speak to him more now that she was becoming part of my practice as well as my inner circle.

  If it was one thing for me to work with somebody. It was quite another thing for them to be part of my therapeutic practice.

  I bodily shoved my beast into the other one. The Taoist sect was blasting the air with attack after attack. They were definitely spamming the attack button. I had forgotten what type of elemental affinity they had, but it appeared to be wind type. Xueyie herself was weaving around protecting people from debris that the battle was creating. She was fast as fuck as I briefly passed her.

  Our two beasts mashed together, a mess on both ends. I was ready to quit when the Taoists brought both of them down.

  Quickly, I could connect both of them with my tactile telekinesis. My control now extended to where one was connected to the other once I connected them. I could get them basically to be part of the same large sphere.

  I turned that over to the Taoists. They blasted the beasts.

  “Can you handle this?” I asked.

  I released the sphere well inside of their range.

  Xueyie’s mother nodded. I jumped back up and looked for another target.

  The neighborhood with the tea vendors and Moon Xiru was being hit hard by two more of the floating beasts. I picked that one because I had a stake there.

  I flew as fast as I could.

  It felt good to move so fast over the square neighbors surrounded by canals. Three of the beasts were massacring any normal humans they found. I stopped short.

  “Fuck... Min this is all out carnage,” I said.

  We were in an open air snack container as far as these beasts were concerned, but I needed to check on Moon Xiru.

  He wasn’t outside his shop, one of the few mercies that this situation had given me so far. I briefly wondered where Xiran was, but I would find her next. I was going to get Moon Xiru and then head to my people with Lorenzo.

  He would know what to do. He might not be a fighter, but he was an effective person in crisis. This city had probably never seen a crisis like this. Even the Mandarin himself was doing something crazy up in the air.

  Every time he hit whatever he was fighting, sparks flew. Some of their attacks didn’t cause devastation.

  I ducked down.

  I wasn’t here to look at that. I need you to stay focused exactly on where I was and make sure that I got through exactly what was trying to do.

  I looked at the shop and gasped.

  Xiru lay there, bleeding out. Something must have gotten to him.

  “Min, can you help him?” I whispered, falling to my knees.

  “I will do what I can. All I can.”

  He looked at me and I choked back whatever I was going to say.

  “Be...hind...you,” he said.

  I pumped my Nascent Soul out and immediately got bowled over. All he had on me was speed. It wasn’t one beast. This was a man with a revenge mission.

  For the second time that day, I had my torso shoved through a wall against my will. The dust from the shoddy marble work was in the air. I looked up to see what had to be a top level red fang enforcer. He was at least third realm.

  “I thought they might send me a challenge,” I said, wiping the blood from my mouth. “Oh, Oh, well.”

  The bald man leered over the dust, looking like he was about to launch into a villain’s monologue.

  “For too long you have killed my brothers and sisters and-“

  I punched him mid sentence. My fist went through his stomach, nearly reaching his spine. The door hadn’t hardened his body, instead deciding to gloat.

  “-and... and...”

  He looked down. I extracted my arm, wiping the blood and stomach acid off on his shirt as he just gaped at the hole where his abs had been.

  He collapsed, a slow train wreck falling down in front of me.

  “Fuck you for making me get out of bed.” I stripped off my shirt. Battles had shredded it, and blood covered it. “And fuck you. I liked this shirt. My girlfriend gave it to me.”

  After cleaning off my arm, I tossed the shirt over his head. I had abs, which was an odd thing to think about it the situation.

  “Heh,” Moon Xiru said. “That was entertaining.”

  I was at his side instantly.

  “Hey, it’s going to be alright.”

  “Joe,” he said. “Thanks for the most interesting season of my life, but I’m... not going to make it. Take care of Moon Fei for me.”

  He coughed blood.

  “Whatever they did to you, I can...”

  He kept coughing up blood. The man was severely bleeding.

  “Let it go. Save Fei. I never agreed with what you did for Xirans but... her too.”

  “What about the rest?” I said.

  Min appeared in his lap.

  “The moon is calling me...”

  His eyes closed, and he stopped breathing.