The Black Tortoise pushed through the infantry like a grinding wheel, relentless and unstoppable. Its relatively low speed was our only saving grace, otherwise we’d have lost more ground than one formation’s stability.Demons were still pouring up out of the rifts, still falling in droves but steadily gaining ground. Every defender was another hole that couldn’t be replaced.Warriors scattered to get out of the way as the turtle stomped its way forward, screaming warnings and firing uselessly against its impervious shell.“Focus on the Tortoise!” I shouted, already running across the sky.If it reached the packed formations behind the pike wall, the casualties would multiply in a breath.I dropped, angled my domain so I didn’t crush anyone under my descent, and hit the ground in front of the beast hard enough to send dust straight up. The dirt under my boots settled in a flat circle as I spread my stance and pushed back.The Black Tortoise’s head thrust forward. The lower jaw was the

The dragon rolled and tried to slip out of Zhang’s grip by spearing straight up. He matched the rise, shifted the gravitational vector sideways, and swung its head down like a weight at the end of a rope. It hit the air it had just heated and hissed as the heat licked its own muzzle. I rode the swing, landed on the back of the skull, and drove my fist into the ridge where the jaw muscles anchored.The impact sent a shock through my elbow. The dragon’s mouth opened full in reflex. I dumped three more pills into the throat and followed them with a short burst tuned to pop the miasma pockets just ahead of them.Each pocket burst left a dark smoke that tried to reverse flow back into the tissue. I slapped seals above the openings to force the flow out through the mouth and nostrils.Zhang gripped its neck, using his gravity Chi to wrangle it, and I hammered it until it calmed. The Azure Dragon’s eyes had been glassy and focused on orders a moment before; now they blinked unevenly as the p

The Demon God roared.I leapt forward, meeting him halfway because distance favored his throws. At close quarters, the First Law helped me as much against his strikes as it did against his ranged assaults.He swung, and I slipped inside the elbow and pressed the flow of his Qi apart, so the strike arrived without force.I answered with a palm to the ribs that drove him half a step sideways. He stepped in again without giving ground and smashed his forehead into mine. Lights flashed across my vision, and I tasted blood. I dropped my weight and caught his knee with mine. The shock ran up my thigh painfully, but it bent his stance.We traded like that, fast and ugly, beating each other bloody and blue as we crashed across the battlefield.Every time we hit, the ground sank and burst, sending clods and grit and broken bone outward. I flared the First Law to spare those I could reach by splitting off heat and shock, but I could not catch everything.Two soldiers died under our feet when a

I leapt at the Demon God as it screamed and used the Fourth Law of Cultivation: Domain.I tapped into the world, into my domain, using everything present to bolster the Tree of Life for just a split second, just long enough for it to be able to use its roots to bind the Demon God in another quasi-cage. There was no time to build a cage from nothing. I took what was already there: the roots, the broken stone columns half buried in soil, the metal plates our engineers had laid, the very weight of the air under the Tree’s crown.I told them to act together for a single purpose. The roots responded first, shooting out in thick coils that wrapped the Demon God at waist, chest, and throat. Smaller roots braided themselves into bands around wrists and ankles. The broken columns rose at my push and wedged into the gaps to give the roots something rigid to brace against. The plates slid under the Demon God’s feet and then up along the calves to keep it from finding ground to push against. The

Yin’s crews, usually loud with clipped commands and the scrape of loading gear, fell quiet except for the low murmur of someone counting softly out of habit.A drummer lowered a stick onto the drumhead and left it there rather than mark the moment with sound. The healers near the Tree kept to their tasks, because abandoning a patient for ceremony felt wrong to them, but even they turned their faces toward the brightness each time they lifted a cup or set a stitch.Each a different mixture—relief, grief, exhaustion, a hard fragile pride—but every face held stillness.***Beyond the lines, citizens filled alleys and rooftops. Some cheered in ragged bursts; some folded to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the ground without knowing the names of the powers at work.Children reached upward and then looked to their parents for whether to laugh or keep still.A vendor propped a broken wheel on stones to square his cart while he stared; an old woman pulled a scarf tighter over her ha