NOVEL NEXT 170: Secret Technique: Use Others As A Meatshield.
Feeling hope and relief blossom in her heart, Lin Songmei leaned against Yan Mingqing. Feeling her and Mingqing’s shoulders rise, Songmei let out a small laugh as she caught her breath. Sure, the satisfaction of doing everything on their own wouldn’t be there, but the addition of these other helpers took magnitudes of pressure off their backs.
Also, in Songmei’s opinion, it was an improvement! Liu Xueli had done all the work the first time around when it came to fighting the big bad monster, but they actually had done a lot, if not most of the work this time around!
Running her hand across her bow, Songmei took a second to reminisce on the small white flowers painted along the bow’s limbs. Almost a year back, during one of their party game nights, Songmei had spent some time painting a couple of basic flowers onto her bow to make it feel a little more personal. Now, the paint was all chipped, and the flowers, though visible, had seen many better days.
On another note, Songmei had to thank the heavens for Starlight Lake. Because the bow was made out of wood, it should’ve been shredded to splinters with all the use, battles, and hits it had gone through. But Starlight Lake, as always, came in clutch with the Qi reinforcement.
With a bit of a stare-off beginning to happen between the two parties, Songmei tried, as always, to push her own Qi into the bow. Getting pushed back by what seemed to a brick wall of Qi, Songmei shrugged, patting the bow a couple times before focusing back up.
In the current four on five situation, Songmei pressed her lips together, wishing towards the heavens to make their numbers advantage into an actual advantage.
Dragging the stare-off on for another half-minute, a silence fell onto the group as Songmei began wishing for another thing in her heart—for the fight to get started. Her body was sore, hurt, and tired, Songmei just wanted to get it over with.
With a couple blinks slipping their way into the stare-off, Pride—true to their name—snapped their fingers, pulling a double bladed staff out of their spatial storage ring. Moving smooth as water, Pride spun, twirling the staff and imbuing it with Qi. Glowing to the visible eye with the Qi imbued into it, the staff was then launched up to the roof by Pride towards where everyone else was standing.
Running forward, Gluttony, without a weapon in hand—or shirt for that matter—leapt up into the air, grinning as he grabbed the staff out of the air mid-rotation. With Pride recalling their staff, Gluttony was yanked downward.
Following their short, wordless exchange, Songmei turned as she heard two sighs escaping the lips of Lust and Sloth. Leaping off the roof, the two dove down towards the battlefield below, rousing the attention of the rest as the relative peace devolved into a huge battle.
“We should go shouldn’t we,” Mingqing groaned, unsheathing her sword with a similar long sigh.
“We should.” Songmei nodded as she made eye contact with Mingqing before sprinting off the rooftop and crashing down onto the battlefield below.
Sliding to the back of the chaotic battle, Songmei slid around, looking for a position behind some of the other fighters. Unlike the roof where she had no defense, Songmei positioned herself behind and between both Mingqing and Gluttony’s battles.
With a position found, Songmei pulled her bow back, letting loose once more a steady rhythmic barrage of arrows. Dancing around the battlefield to keep herself between the various battles, Songmei spent most, if not all of her efforts supporting Mingqing, the weakest of the group.
The other bit of Songmei’s efforts were spent just keeping track of what in the heavens was going on in a battle so chaotic. Songmei, having attempted to send some Qi into her eyes, had found it was a lost cause after she was blinded for half a second before she stopped.
In all honesty, Songmei could only describe the Qi signatures in the battle as a mix between a firework show being set off right on her retinas and a laser show where the organizers thought their audience would like it better if every laser was cranked up to eye-damage levels of brightness.
The cause of all the chaos was... multifold. The mayor, as usual, was going ballistic, swinging his sword around as if he was a child’s spinning top toy. Yet, with his whole ‘took a whole bag of very suspicious performance enhancing drugs’ thing going on, every Qi slash he sent left a wake of destruction in its wake.
Mingqing’s fighting style, on the other hand, didn’t cause too many Qi disturbances because she was facing away from Songmei. Cultivating a water art meant Mingqing’s sword style shifted between a calm creek and a rushing waterfall. Whenever she went on the offensive, Mingqing’s sword-style resembled a dragon—or well... kunpeng—dominating and crashing down from the heavens.
Having sparred against Mingqing, Songmei knew Mingqing’s sword style gave off blinding barrages of flashing lights Qi-wise whenever she went on the offensive, only in one direction though.
Jettisoning arrow after arrow into the middle of Mingqing and the mayor’s battle, Songmei tried her best to pry open the wounds already on the mayor’s body. Watching Mingqing cough up blood as another sword slash cleaved into the side of her body, sending her flying into the wall of a nearby warehouse, Songmei scrunched her eyebrows and tightened her grip on her bow.
Trying to break the mayor’s rhythm and destroy his focus on Mingqing, Songmei began another barrage against the mayor while amping up the power in her arrows further and further.
Watching Mingqing scramble out of the warehouse and back into the middle of the battlefield where she wasn’t cornered, Songmei circulated her Qi faster than ever. Lasering arrows one after another into the midst of the mayor’s unending sword strikes, Songmei clenched her teeth and sank into the nauseating feeling sprouting in her stomach to draw on more Qi.
With the impacts and shockwaves from nearby battles forcing a couple misses, Songmei began adjusting each arrow’s trajectory mid-air while also generating and shooting another arrow at the same time. Feeling a splitting headache come on, Songmei forced her heavy breaths to continue as she forced her eyes to take in more information.
Tuning out the other battles happening at the same time, Songmei had no choice but to force her feet to keep moving as a few stray attacks landed in her general vicinity. Trusting Lust, Sloth, and Gluttony to keep her safe as she drew out everything, Songmei rushed a little closer towards Mingqing and the mayor to help with everything she could in their last struggle.
